Begrijpelijkheid van pensioencommunicatie: Effecten van wetgeving, geletterdheid en revisies

In a project on Financial Communication, research has been done in the
domains of pensions, mortgages and debt collection. This paper presents the
results of three studies, concentrating on the pension domain. In the first
study we reflect upon mandated disclosure. We demonstrate that the legal
context for pension communication is far more detailed than for the other
domains. There is a specific law on pension communication with detailed
instructions for different documents. Pension organizations consider these
obligations as a hindrance for effective and tailored pension communication.
In the second study we tested whether participants could locate and
comprehend specific information in two versions (original and revision) of
three pension documents. We also measured the level of financial literacy of
the participants. We demonstrate that in one case study the revision of the
document resulted in a reverse Matthew-effect: participants with lower levels
of financial literacy performed better in finding information using the revised
document compared to the original. This reverse effect is labelled as a
Martinus-effect.