Mental Health and Fintech Platform Adoption for Retirement Planning Among the Underprivileged in Malaysia

As Malaysians are expected to live another 15 years or more after retirement and the B40 group has the highest probability of lacking retirement savings when they retire, a sustainable retirement system could only be achieved if issues of retirement planning could be understood from the behavioural perspectives. This study examined the influence of mental health potentially affecting fintech platform adoption, along with the perception of risks and benefits for retirement planning, among the B40 group with household income of less than 4,850. Interestingly, the result of this study seems to suggest that perceived benefits of fintech platform are negatively impacting retirement planning behaviour while perceived risks of fintech adoption have no significant influence on retirement planning behaviour. The results seem to suggest that the higher the benefits they perceive associated with fintech platform adoption, the lower the involvement, especially among the busy individual in retirement planning. However, mental health is observed to be positively impacting retirement planning behaviour. Implementing the right incentives or strategies by integrating the behavioural elements related to mental health, risks, and benefits perception are imperative to mitigate the potential risks of further deterioration of the current retirement system.