Financial literacy and financial advice seeking: Does product specificity matter?

We study the effect of financial literacy on financial advice seeking. We test the relationship across different measures of the former and the latter, providing a contribution to the existing literature. Overall results suggest complementarity, but when considering product-specific financial literacy and financial advice seeking, a complementary effect emerges for investments and debt, while a substitution effect prevails for insurance and pension products. Financial advising services can therefore compensate for the lack of financial literacy in insurance and pension planning in the short run. Conversely, greater policy efforts are needed for investment and loans, where poor financial literacy translates into a scarce demand for financial advice.