Conception, développement et évaluation d’un système en ligne d’aide à la décision pour le choix de produits financiers

Small investors are confronted with multiple challenges when it comes to choosing how, with whom and where to invest.The investment process can be time consuming especially for those with basic skills and knowledge on the subject.The specific terminologies related to financial services, the immensity of products and intermediaries, the lack of experience exposing one to possible fraud and the lack of standardized methods are some examples of challenges that an investor might come across during the investment process.The purpose of this research is to develop and test an online experimental decision support system that would both mitigate the risks for small investor by increasing their level of awareness and knowledge and optimizing their decision process by presenting them a clear and complete picture of their investor profile and corresponding financial products.The system supports the investors through a structured investment process leading to a quick overview of the financial products available on the market and their characteristics.The system has a specific mission: to support the investors in their investment process through a structured decision making process that procures information on the terminology of the financial sector and on the different types of products and services corresponding their needs.The system was developed in three phases.During the analysis phase, a literature review was conducted during which we went over the 3 investments guides published by the AMF (Autorit des Marchs Financiers) and the financial policies regulating the financial market in Quebec in order to define a structured investment decision making process and the critical elements to take into account when defining an investor's profile.Documentations published by the CFA Institute (Chartered Financial Analyst Institute) and the MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) along with multiple scholarly literatures were consulted to deepen our understanding of the financial domain and to define the parameters of the system.Financial experts were also consulted to help and guide in the development process.Then, 22 similar decision support systems from 19 different creators, both local and international, were analysed in order to benchmark their way of defining investor's profile and the content of their systems.By the end of this phase, the functional and technical requirements of the system were defined allowing the beginning of the next phase.ix During the design phase, we designed the investment selection process used by the system.Then based on our founding, we built the prototype on an Apache server using MySQL to host the database that was programmed in SQL.32 products, 19 mutual funds, 8 bonds and 5 investments with guaranteed and variables return (CPG), from 4 different institutions established in Quebec were integrated in the database.Taking into account the different instance of bond and CPG and mutual funds categories, the amount of products populating the database goes up to 117.PHP was used for the backend programming.CSS, HTML and JavaScript were used to build the forms, the interface and for client side validation purposes.In total, 10 web pages separated in 2 modules, the decision support tool and the support module were created.The system functionalities were then tested and corrections were applied before starting the next phase.During the last development phase, we tested the performance and the reliability of the system.The user's satisfaction was also addressed during the tests.3 experts and 15 final users participated to the tests.The performance tests, which consisted in a comparison of the system's recommendations to those of the experts, revealed that 61% of the recommendation made by the system fit partly or totally those of the experts and that 26.4 % fit totally those of the experts.The reliability test, which consisted in a comparison of the investors/profile pairing functionality of the system to the profile defined by the investor profile definition tool found in the AMF guide, revealed that 80% of the profile defined by the system fit those defined by the AMF tool.Finally, users' satisfaction, collected through surveys, revealed that the system allows them to have a better understanding of the financial world terminology, a better understanding of the elements to take into account during the investment process and a better vision of the financial products available and fitting their profile.The users are unanimous, such system would be useful to guide and inform investors.Experts' comments allowed us to pin point future improvements in both the investment process and the prototype.

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