The Distracted Customer Changes the Price of a Clean Sale

AFM findings put clearer choices, human answers and stronger records behind every financial add-on.

A customer reaches the final screen of an online purchase. The laptop, holiday or bicycle is already chosen. Payment is next. Then another option appears: insurance, an extra guarantee or deferred payment.

The customer wants to finish the purchase, not begin a careful study of financial products. That ordinary moment deserves more attention from the businesses that design it.

The AFM’s Consumentenmonitor 2026, published on 24 September, found that one in ten Dutch consumers had taken out insurance or an additional guarantee directly through a provider while buying a product or service during the previous twelve months.

A completed sale is not always a well-understood sale. When attention is scarce, a company cannot rely on every buyer pausing to compare terms, check existing cover or investigate alternatives.

Limited attention is normal

The AFM’s wider findings show how financial choices often sit in the background of ordinary life. Nearly one quarter of consumers say they have never examined their pension position. Among people aged 18 to 34, that rises to more than four in ten.

More than half of non-retired pension participants do not know what type of pension arrangement they have or had. Insurance choices can also remain untouched for years. Sixty-eight percent of consumers with household-contents or liability insurance have not changed insurer for more than five years.

That may reflect satisfaction, habit, uncertainty or simple lack of attention. For a business, the practical reality is clear: customers do not continuously reassess financial decisions.

The old commercial picture placed the financial choice apart from the ordinary purchase. A customer spoke with an adviser, read the information and considered the product. Today, the financial choice may sit inside a checkout screen, subscription journey or automated conversation.

The distance between buying and financing, or between buying and insuring, has narrowed sharply. That changes the work of the seller, platform and provider. Convenience now carries part of the responsibility for how a customer reaches a decision.

The screen shapes the choice

In July, the AFM reviewed 22 online embedded-insurance environments. It found journeys that could steer customers towards cover that did not fit their circumstances, including insurance that overlapped with cover they already held.

Accepting insurance was often easier than refusing it. The option to continue without cover could receive less prominence or require more effort from the customer.

Well-designed embedded insurance can offer useful protection at the right moment. The business issue is the design of that moment. A timestamp showing that a customer clicked “accept” records an action. A sound sales record should also show how the price, cover, alternatives and refusal route appeared to that customer.

The question for a founder or board is straightforward. What is the customer accepting in this journey? What is being postponed until after payment? What will that mean for cash, customer service, compliance and governance when the first dispute arrives?

A refund has a history

The immediate cost of a weak sales journey is usually mundane. A customer cancels. Staff search for the wording shown at the time. The insurer asks which version of the screen was live. Customer service cannot see whether the buyer received an explanation. Finance has already booked the revenue and must process a correction.

Consider the laptop buyer who later finds that household insurance already provided relevant cover. The amount may be modest, yet the business still needs to reconstruct the transaction. Who offered the add-on? What did the customer see? Was refusal straightforward? Which information followed the sale? Who can correct the outcome?

For a small firm, this is where compliance reaches the ledger. Add-on revenue can look attractive in a conversion report while refunds, cancellations and service hours sit elsewhere in the accounts. Reading those figures separately can make a campaign appear more profitable than it is.

Customer misunderstanding belongs beside sales data, not in a separate customer-service folder. Repeated questions, early cancellations and refund patterns show where a journey converts well on screen but creates work and distrust later.

AI changes the conversation

The AFM also found that about one in seven consumers had used an AI tool for help with financial matters during the preceding year. Among those users, 29 percent generally regarded AI financial information or advice as reliable. Among non-users, the figure was 6 percent.

Customers will increasingly arrive with explanations and comparisons produced outside the company’s own process. Some will help them prepare. Others may blur the line between general information and a decision that depends on personal circumstances, product conditions or existing cover.

Businesses face a similar issue internally. CBS reported that 13.8 percent of Dutch microbusinesses with two to nine workers used at least one measured AI technology in 2025. Among those users, 25.9 percent used AI for administration or management tasks. Commercial software was the most common route into AI use.

A small business does not need ceremony around every tool. It does need a named person who understands where automated wording enters a customer journey, which source supports it and when a human takes over. Responsibility should remain visible, even when an answer appears instantly.

A clean sale needs an owner

The practical response begins with one customer journey, not a large manual. Follow the buyer from the offer to payment. Look at what appears first, how an option is refused, where questions go and what the system retains.

Then place conversion results beside cancellations, complaints, refunds and recurring misunderstandings. A business that sees those numbers together can judge the real quality of the sale.

Return to the customer at the checkout. The firm may have only seconds of attention, but it controls the placement, wording and route through the screen. It also controls whether staff can later explain what happened.

That is where customer care, cash discipline and governance meet. Dutch consumers will not become permanently vigilant because financial products have moved online. A sound business model should not depend on them doing so.

The stronger company designs for ordinary human attention, keeps a reachable human route and knows who owns the outcome after the customer has clicked.

The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Paolo Maria Pavan. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Paolo Maria Pavan before publication.

References

• Financiële zaken lang niet altijd op de voorgrond bij consumenten
• Autoriteit Financiële Markten - Consumer financial attention, product review and fraud reporting
• Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek - AI use by consumers and the gap between general adoption and financial reliance
• Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek - AI use inside microbusinesses and administrative control
• Autoriteit Financiële Markten - Embedded insurance and online choice architecture
• Autoriteit Financiële Markten - AI accountability in financial services
• Rijksoverheid - Credit at the checkout and consumer protection
• Autoriteit Financiële Markten - Consumentenonderzoek