An Experimental Study on Risk Assessment for Bank Customers: Comparative Evaluation of Assessment Methods and Analysis of Assessment Effectiveness

Low yield and principal-protected payment have distorted customers’ perception of investment risk. Implementing new regulations and standardizing wealth investment products cause many low-yield products suffered great losses. Customer dissatisfaction deteriorates the relationship between banks and customers. A potential cause is that there may be a mismatch between the classification of product risk and the category of customer risk assessment. This paper studies the commercial bank customer risk assessment performance to uncover the reason. It experimentally compares the performances of three risk assessment tasks, including the risk assessment questionnaire, the classic lottery choice task, and the emerging bomb risk elicitation task. It is found that the degree of risk aversion measured by the risk questionnaire is significantly lower than that measured by the bomb risk elicitation task, but not significantly different from that measured by the lottery choice task. Furthermore, the three tasks have consistent results in the classification of risk-seeking customers, but different results in risk-averse customers. The risk assessment questionnaire classifies the majority of customers into two categories, making it difficult to distinguish the individual differences between these two groups. Since customer classification is the core objective of risk assessment, this paper helps commercial banks better understand the differences between different assessment tasks and choose a better assessment task. It provides suggestions for further improving risk assessment.