Investment Campaigns Need to Get Real
The reaction to the UK government’s latest attempt to attract first-time investors highlights a serious flaw in the way investing is promoted.
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Late last month saw the launch of the ‘Invest for the Future’ campaign, which has been described as the first coordinated industry-wide effort to change how investing is understood, discussed and adopted.
The initiative is supported by HM Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Money and Pensions Service. However, its funding comes from the industry – and this is where the problems start.
The UK-based financial services firms funding the campaign include blue-chip names such as Aviva, Fidelity International, Jupiter, L&G, Quilter, Schroders, St James's Place, Barclays, NatWest, Hargreaves Lansdown and Vanguard. But what about lower-cost options that are aimed at the more modest investor?
One of the flaws of a campaign backed by the largest investment firms is that they have no incentive to drive business towards platforms that are more suited to absolute beginners. The likes of AJ Bell and Trading 212 are conspicuously missing from the campaign, apparently because they felt the cost of participation was prohibitive.
Big money campaign, backed by the Chancellor
— David Hearne, CFP™ (@dontdelay) April 23, 2026
No website
No QR code
'Find out'
But find out where?
🤦♂️ pic.twitter.com/PcRcUZu9cH
One investment manager pointed to this as yet another example of incumbents seeking to maintain control of an industry that refuses to embrace innovation.
“The younger generation are already using innovative, user-friendly (and yes, cheaper) options,” he says. “There is an entire generation who are actively interested investors supplementing their income/savings by engaging with these cool, easy-to-use platforms. The mission is to make these platforms more informative so that investment decisions can be made on that basis as opposed to shorter-term trading.”
Discussions around this topic reference a number of platforms that could provide a more effective bridge between nervous investors and equity markets, including Freetrade, Dodl from AJ Bell and InvestEngine.
PT Barnum might have said that there is no such thing as bad publicity – but in this case I would beg to differ. Directing first-time investors with relatively small sums towards firms that typically handle six-figure portfolios runs the risk of further alienating those who feel investing simply isn’t for them.
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Don’t Believe Everything You Read
One unwanted side effect of educational campaigns that miss the mark is that they drive the unwary further into the arms of finfluencers.
There are a number of steps you can take to establish the credibility of someone claiming to have unique insight into the world of investment. For example, if you are looking for advice from someone who is authorised by their financial services regulator, these regulators will typically maintain a register of advisers.
One of the ways in which finfluencers get around the authorisation issue is to present themselves as a ‘money coach’, a generic term that gets around the need for qualifications or regulatory compliance. But these individuals should only share information and have absolutely no authority to offer investment advice.
Related: The UAE Regulated Finfluencers First. Now Comes the Hard Part.
Many of the illegal promotions taken down by regulators during their periodic crackdowns on finfluencers involve payments to these individuals to promote a particular investment or platform. There is no such thing as a free lunch here, so it would be naïve to think they are not being compensated for their endorsement.
The best way to avoid falling victim here is to do your research. See what other people are saying about this asset or platform, and if you are not convinced, walk away. Rather than clicking on links from social media sites, do a company search to make sure it is legitimate.
This is not to say that finfluencers are an entirely malign influence. There are individuals who are genuinely committed to making finance more accessible to underserved groups rather than pushing get-rich-quick schemes, and they make it clear that all investment comes with some degree of risk. A few simple checks can help sift out the good from the bad.
Blinded by the Benchmark?
Now that you are a confident investor, it’s time to tie your financial future to a market index, sit back and watch the cash roll in, right?
Well, not exactly – at least according to RBC BlueBay, which argues that benchmark-level returns can conceal widening differences beneath the surface and that portfolios aligned to the same benchmark may appear similar but behave very differently in practice.
When an index becomes highly concentrated in a small number of stocks, investors who assume it represents maximum diversification may be taking more risk than they realise.
Concentration is only one way in which benchmarks can change. Sector and country exposure have shifted too, says Habib Subjally, senior portfolio manager and head of global equities. “Technology now represents roughly double the share of global indices than it did a decade ago, while the US accounts for around 72 per cent of the MSCI World Index,” he says. “People assume they’ve got maximum diversification and often they don’t.”
As the biggest companies outperform, their weight in cap-weighted indices rises. Passive inflows then direct more money towards those same stocks, reinforcing their dominance. Gradually, a ‘neutral’ portfolio can become increasingly concentrated.
The consequences of this become clearer when volatility returns, and markets fall. Maria Satizabal, portfolio manager in multi-asset credit and asset allocation, points out that two portfolios tracking the same benchmark can deliver markedly different outcomes depending on design and risk management.
“Clients don’t experience benchmarks,” she says. “They experience drawdowns.” These are the periods when portfolio values fall sharply and take time to recover.
Part of the issue lies in benchmark construction - in bond markets, benchmark weights are determined by the amount of debt outstanding. “Those issuers with the highest weights are those with the most debt,” says Satizabal. “That doesn’t automatically mean they are the strongest credits.”
Other risks can be less visible until markets come under pressure. Liquidity can evaporate just when investors most need it, and bonds that look investment grade can be downgraded in weaker conditions. Benchmarks provide an anchor, concludes Satizabal, but investors need to analyse drawdown, volatility in stress conditions and liquidity resilience.
