While the saving environment has become more complex in recent years, so has the demand for individual activity. Important impetuses include financial deregulation, globalization, technological change, and reformed pension systems. Financial institutions can provide financial advisory services to help their customers to obtain positive net benefits by avoiding mistakes and using economies of scale, and they can also attract and maintain their customers by creating strong relationships. Earlier studies show that the incentive structure often leads to advice that is not to the benefit of the customers. In addition, not all customers seek and receive advisory services. The objective of this study is to increase our understanding of the relationship between the bank advisor–customer relation and the bank customer’s saving behavior.

The scope of the study is to analyze relevant theories and develop a model that includes financial advisors as a mediator of saving behavior, and to understand the relational attributes that can affect saving behavior. Also, the characteristics of customers with a relational versus a transactional exchange form with the bank are explored. Given the problems of establishing causality, the scope is also to understand the impact of the relationship and, in particular, face-to-face advisory meetings on saving behavior. The analysis is mainly carried out with the help of customer data–both objective bank register data and subjective survey data–while the advisor characteristics are to a lesser extent part of the data material.