Announcing Finthropology—bringing the human into finance
I am delighted to launch Finthropology, a consultancy specializing in insights into people's financial behaviour.
The name 'Finthropology' brings together two of my passions: finance and anthropology. When I began studying anthropology as an undergraduate in 1998 I was struck by the discipline's ability to analyse seemingly anything. I remember being stunned by David M. Schneider's book American Kinship. David describes family relationships in the USA as though he is an alien who has just dropped in from outer space. This ability to think like a stranger is anthropology's key strength: it helps us to see what is really there, rather than what we assume is there.
I was soon to discover that Schneider's alien gaze could also be applied to the world of finance. Over the years I got hooked on books like Melissa Fisher's Wall Street Women , Karen Ho's Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, Allison J. Truitt's Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City and, of course, David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
I soon embarked on my own journey to delve into how humans think about money. After my PhD research in a squatter settlement in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where I looked into how very poor people invest in their housing and futures, I moved west to Haiti to investigate the new mobile money services appearing there (funded by the IMTFI, with Heather Horst and Espelencia Baptiste).
By this time I was hooked. I find money fascinating because it is so fundamental to how we live our lives and relate to our fellow human beings. We need it to provide security for ourselves and our families. Trying to ensure we have enough of it can cause us a lot of stress and anguish. If we don't have enough of it, it can be very hard to live our lives the way we want. Money sometimes seems to be a curse.
And yet money also allows us to be productive, creative, and find self-fulfilment. We use it to buy things that express our identities and connect with our friends and family. As Allison Truitt points out in her book, we also use money in rituals that connect us with our broader communities.
Money itself is not the enemy. Instead, there are two other problems that affect our relationships with money. The first is uneven access to and distribution of wealth. The second (partially caused by the first) is that we do not understand our own relationship with money. We are afraid of it, we are usually not very aware of why we use money in certain ways, and our own decision-making processes are often a mystery to us. Above all, we see money as a problem or as something shallow, rather than as a very useful tool that can enrich our lives.
I founded Finthropology to change the current mindset about money and its role in our lives. I want to help companies and organizations working in finance to serve consumers better, giving them more appropriate financial tools and more fruitful ways to think about money.
I do not believe that better financial tools can end inequality or wipe out poverty. Poverty is a structural problem and will not be solved simply by giving people bank accounts. However, I do believe that better financial tools and new ways of thinking can benefit us humans in many ways, including relieving financial pressure, providing security, reducing stress, saving more, and gaining control over our lives.
Fortunately I am not on this journey alone. I am so pleased that Dr. Anette Broløs and Dr. Alexia Maddox have joined me as Associate Consultants. Both Anette and Alexia have long histories of working in the financial space: Anette in banks and as CEO of Copenhagen Fintech Innovation and Research, and Alexia doing research on new technologies like cryptocurrency. Additionally we have the fabulous Tessa Veldhorst standing by to design our reports and infographics, ensuring that the human story of finance is accessible to a wide audience.
We would love to hear from you. What do you think are the main issues facing consumers today? The finance industry is changing fast: how is it set to impact people? How will people's behaviours change in response to all the new services on the market? And, most importantly, how can we build a financial world fit for humans?
