The study found that companies need to release disclosures before someone makes a decision on whether to engage a financial intermediary or purchase an investment product or service.

Disclosures about financial intermediaries must include fees, disciplinary history, investment strategy, and conflicts of interest to be absolutely essential. Investors favor summary documents containing key information about the investment product, with respect to investment product disclosures.

Investors prefer disclosures to be written clearly, concisely and in understandable language, using bullet points, tables, charts and graphs.

Companies should increase the transparency of conflicts of interest by providing specific examples that demonstrate how a potential conflict of interest would operate in relation to the specific advice furnished to the client; present the conflicts of interest disclosure in a bulleted format or in a summary table format; and make the conflicts of interest disclosure more specific, even if it results in a lengthier disclosure document; make the conflicts of interest disclosure brief and more general, with more specific information available upon request; and disclose whether a financial intermediary stands to profit if a client invests in certain types of products, whether they would earn more for selling specific products instead of other comparable products and whether the financial intermediary would benefit from selling financial products issued by an affiliated company.

The study also found ways to improve financial literacy among investors by targeting young investors, lump sum payout recipients, investment trustees, the military, underserved populations and the elderly; promoting the importance of checking the background of investment professionals; promoting investor.gov as the primary federal government resource for investing information; and promoting awareness of the fees and costs of investing.