Teaching Financial Wellness: the Effects of Personalized Debt Counseling for At-Risk Borrowers

Last registered on August 17, 2020
View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Teaching Financial Wellness: the Effects of Personalized Debt Counseling for At-Risk Borrowers
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0003620
Initial registration date
September 26, 2019

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 26, 2019, 11:50 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
August 17, 2020, 11:30 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Daniel Herbst
Affiliation
University of Arizona
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2017-11-06
End date
2021-08-31
Keywords
Finance & Microfinance, Governance
Additional Keywords
Consumer Finance, Debt Counseling, Behavioral Finance
JEL code(s)
G530 Household Finance: Financial Literacy
Secondary IDs
Abstract
I evaluate a randomized controlled trial of high-touch financial counseling sessions provided by a non-profit financial wellness organization. Counseling sessions consist of thirty- to sixty-minute phone calls, in which counselors help individuals prioritize their debts and construct a detailed budget. Drawing from a sample of highly-distressed student loan borrowers, I measure the impact of these counseling sessions on a variety of financial health outcomes, including credit scores, bankruptcies, credit card balances, and student loan delinquencies.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Herbst, Daniel. 2020. "Teaching Financial Wellness: the Effects of Personalized Debt Counseling for At-Risk Borrowers." AEA RCT Registry. August 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3620-1.1
Sponsors & Partners

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention consists of high-touch financial counseling sessions provided by a non-profit financial wellness organization. Counseling sessions consist of thirty- to sixty-minute phone calls, in which counselors help individuals prioritize their debts and construct a detailed budget.
Intervention Start Date
2017-11-06
Intervention End Date
2018-04-23

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Credit bureau outcomes: credit scores; number of credit cards; credit card delinquencies, balances, limits, and utilization rates; mortgage balances and delinquencies; auto loan balances and delinquencies; bankruptcies;

Student loan outcomes: student loan balances; repayment plan choice, automatic payment enrollment, delinquencies (any, 90+ days , 270+ days), deferments/forbearances, and unemployment deferments.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
A large student loan servicer provided me a list of anonymized identifiers linked to annual credit bureau data and monthly student loan information. The list population included any borrower who had received a delinquency call from the servicer between 2012 and 2016. From this list I randomly selected a fifty-percent sample of "treatment eligible" borrowers and generated a borrower-level "financial wellness index" based on credit bureau and student loan information. I then provided the list to the loan servicer, which regularly contacts delinquent borrowers through incoming and outgoing phone calls handled by loan servicing agents.

During the intervention period, calls between borrowers and servicer were placed and received as usual. However, call agents were notified of borrowers' treatment eligibility once they were connected to a call. Upon connecting with a treatment-eligible borrower, call agents would ask borrowers if they were interested in free financial counseling. If a borrower consented to the counseling treatment, the call agent would transfer the call to the non-profit financial counselor along with that borrower's anonymized identifier. The financial counselor would then initiate the counseling session.

To make sure the financial counselor did not receive too many or too few calls over a given period, treatment eligibility was ratcheted up or down depending on the flow of calls. Using the treatment eligibility list and financial wellness index, the loan servicer started with a small group of its most distressed borrowers and gradually increased who would be referred for treatment. Importantly, I retain anonymized identifiers and index values for all treatment-eligible and control borrowers.

After 250 borrowers have received treatment, the intervention will cease, and the financial counseling organization will provide me a list of dates, times, and anonymized identifiers corresponding to each counseling session. The loan servicer will continue to collect credit bureau and student loan information for all borrowers through their normal operations. Specific dates are not yet determined, but I will wait one to three years before collecting outcome data from the servicer for analysis. Follow-up data collection will take place in subsequent years for longer-term outcomes.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization was done in office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Randomization took place a the individual level.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
210,008 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
210,008 individuals per month for 12 to 120 months, depending on collection period
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
250 treated individuals
105,004 "treatment eligible" individuals
105,004 control individuals
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Princeton University Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects
IRB Approval Date
2017-01-27
IRB Approval Number
0000008090
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials