For 10 years, we've been studying people's real relationship with money, protection and the future. Fundamental knowledge, now amplified by AI, which is reshaping financial behaviour faster than institutions can adapt.
years of fundamental research on people's relationship with money, savings, retirement and protection against risk.
respondents in the quantitative study on what drives investment: managers and senior professionals with over €40k in available savings.
AI is becoming the first reflex for informal financial advice, ahead of the bank adviser, ahead of comparison sites. The relationship of trust is up for grabs again.
From everyday money management to retirement planning, from what drives investment to the protection ecosystem, we've carried out around ten fundamental studies on people's relationship with money.
Data updated twice a year on how people turn to AI for financial decisions, savings, retirement and protection against risk.
Our relationship with money is first and foremost a social fact, not an economic one. Six core theses drawn from our ethnographic research, which still hold true in the age of AI.
Money inherited from your grandmother isn't interchangeable with your salary. People “earmark” their money: how it's used depends on where it came from and the relationships through which it changes hands.
They build sealed-off pots. Banking products lump everything into one abstract balance, wiping out precisely the meaning people give their money.
Going digital erases the practices people use to stay in control. Fluidity serves institutions, not individuals.
Saving = protecting. Investing = risking to gain. It isn't risk appetite that holds people back, it's uncertainty about the future.
Caution → going without → nest egg → family support → insurance. 4 relationships with insurance: Talisman, Distrust, Partnership, Cooperative.
The key: make retirement desirable by building a life project before talking about products.
Our theses still hold. But AI brings new tensions: around trust, the role of the adviser and the visibility of products.
“Saving means protecting. Investing means risking to gain. It isn't risk appetite that holds back investment, it's uncertainty about the future, which locks all available capital into precautionary savings.”
Mixed-methods study: 24 in-home ethnographic interviews + quantitative survey of 474 respondents (managers, savings >€40k). Decision model, segmentation into 4 profiles, 9 prioritised business challenges.
“Retirement isn't a financial problem to solve, it's a life project to build. Starting with savings is the wrong way in.”
16 in-depth interviews + ideation workshop (35 business challenges) + service design + experience map + prototype tests with 8 members.
By starting from people's real relationship with money, not from the technology. unknowns designs solutions that support concrete uses: services that give money meaning again where AI makes everything abstract, journeys designed around real life moments, agents deployed in advisory and marketing teams beyond the POC. All rooted in a detailed understanding of how people save, invest, protect themselves and plan for the future.
AI is becoming the go-to informal financial adviser: customers ask it before their bank adviser and before comparison sites. And it reasons in product categories, not brand names — brand disintermediation is already under way. For players in the sector, differentiation now hinges on the ability to give money meaning and support life moments, an area unknowns has been working on for ten years.
Not rational calculation or risk appetite alone, but social and identity-driven logics: people manage their lives, not their money. They “earmark” their money according to where it came from, build sealed-off reserves, and draw a sharp line between saving (protecting themselves) and investing (risking to gain). unknowns has modelled these drivers through ten years of ethnographic research. At a time when AI pushes towards abstraction, this is the asset that makes it possible to design products and services that truly make sense.
unknowns is neither a communications agency nor a market research institute. We combine social sciences, design and generative AI to start from people's real relationship with money and risk, not what they say in a survey. This field knowledge, built up over ten years with individuals and industry players, is what makes our recommendations actionable.