Bank-Advisor Certification and Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Finance Products

We examine Swiss retail investors' willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainable finance products and the influence of bank advisor certification. In a hypothetical choice experiment with a randomized controlled trial (RCT), we assigned participants to either a priming treatment with a bank advisor certified in sustainable investing or a control group. We found a WTP between 1 and 1.5 percentage points of annual return for sustainable mutual funds, especially among financially literate investors. The presence of a certified green finance advisor further increased WTP between 0.2 and 0.8 percentage points, particularly for investors with low financial literacy.