The original version of this article first appeared in World Economic Forum. The first time I invested in a financial product as a teenager, I asked the bank teller for a solution that could offer “higher returns”. I was quickly presented with a compelling story and a fund that had surging performance of over 20% in the previous three months. Trusting as I was, I ploughed the little, hard-earned savings I had into the opportunity, ignoring the subscription fee, management fee, level of diversification, longevity of the strategy and other obvious things investors should consider. It was about 10 years after that first investment, which performed very poorly, that I understood fully what happened that day.  In addition to the many factors I missed was a critical question I had not even realised I needed to ask: the motivation and incentive for the bank teller to recommend me that financial...