Investors pulled £1.6 billion out of UK equity funds in July 2026, the biggest exit in over a year, even as money kept flowing into assets such as bonds and cash. In the same month, active US equity funds saw $34.5 billion in net outflows, even as index funds gained. It’s a natural reaction to a market downturn, especially for newer investors who have never had a downturn to compare it to. But when you multiply that instinct across a whole generation of new investors, it turns into an industry-wide retention issue.

‍

If you’re in marketing, product or customer experience at a bank, brokerage, platform or wealth manager, and you’re running onboarding or a personalization programme such as the Targeted Support, the UK’s regulatory framework that bridges the “advice gap” between generic guidance and fully regulated personal financial advice, that's the number your dashboards don’t show.

‍

At the same time, every effort to get people investing – the onboarding flows, personalized support programmes and marketing campaigns – is built and measured around one moment: the first investment. Nearly every funnel and KPI stops just there, as if the job ends once someone’s put their money in.

‍

In reality, the first trade should be the starting gun. What decides whether the whole exercise pays off happens six, nine, twelve months down the line, when markets move again and the investor has to decide whether to stay invested long-term. 

‍

It takes regular content to keep habits and confidence alive and build that kind of behavior. A single nudge at sign-up just won’t cut it.

Why new investors are the most likely to bail

With the stock market performing as it has in recent years, many novice investors will have only known good times –  this makes them easier to spook.  Routine market ups and downs can feel like proof they made a mistake, and might be the moment they’re lost for good.

‍

It isn’t necessarily less painful to lose when you’re dealing with smaller amounts, either: losing £200 on a £2,000 pot can feel as big as losing £20k on a £200k one. Loss aversion theory suggests that the pain of losing something is felt about twice as intensely as the pleasure of an equivalent gain.

According to MIT research tracking over 650,000 brokerage accounts, nearly a third of US investors who panic-sold during a downturn never went back into risky assets; Allianz’s 2026 Annual Retirement Study found that over a third of Americans – two-thirds of millennials, under one in 10 baby boomers – say they typically withdraw during a serious drop.

‍

What investors buy first is also a factor in how early they’re likely to exit. A third of Gen Z investors chose cryptocurrency as their first-ever investment, compared to 9% of Gen X and just 2% of over-62s, per Vanguard’s British Money Mindset Report. The volatility of crypto makes Gen Z – future investors upon whom the next decade of AUM growth depends – more exposed to the kind of early scare that drives people out of investing for good. 

‍

Regardless of age or the market’s performance, newer investors are simply more likely to stop early. FINRA’s tracking of the 2020 US cohort found beginner investors were 13.5% less likely than experienced investors to still be investing two years on – 75.2% versus 88.6%. 

‍

Platforms and brokers need to pay special attention in those first few years to support investors as they enter the market, ensuring they feel confident enough to stay the course. 

The regulatory case: UK and US

The UK’s Consumer Duty has made it clear that firms have to support customers through the lifecycle, not just at the point of purchase. And the regulatory train has left the station: Targeted Support went live on 6 April 2026, with applications open from 2 March, and firms are already operating under it.

‍

The US’s Reg BI is narrower, tied to the moment of recommendation rather than what happens after, so the case for US firms rests less on regulation and more on the standard advisors already hold themselves to under their fiduciary duty.

The moral case

This is bigger than any one firm’s customer book. There’s a whole generation of first-time savers who are just beginning to build wealth through investing, and fumbling their experience won’t only impact the AUM of one firm, but could turn a whole crop of would-be investors off investing for life. 

‍

The scale of those in the balance makes this all the more urgent. Boring Money’s Future of Advice Report 2026 estimates the UK’s advice gap to be 14.6 million adults, including 4.7 million sitting on £10,000 in cash, who say they’re willing to invest but haven’t. How firms treat the cohort to take the first leap impacts whether the rest follow.

‍

A firm that actively nudges someone into investing takes on some responsibility for what happens next. For instance, someone who panic-sells and never returns may end up worse off than if they’d never invested at all, and that can come back to haunt the firm that nudged them in. On top of losing that customer’s future AUM, they risk the reputational hit of having steered someone into a bad outcome.

The commercial case

Every beginner investor costs money to acquire, and a customer who invests once and redeems within a quarter never repays that cost, undermining the whole saver-to-investor business case. 

‍

Losing new investors early forecloses everything the relationship was meant to build: AUM growth, cross-sell, referrals, and a customer who trusts the firm enough to hold anything else with them.

‍

A retained investor is worth more. For example, a £500 opening pot with £50 monthly contributions grows to roughly £8,600 over ten years, at a 5% annual return. Multiplied across a whole UK cohort, that adds up to billions in AUM, and repeats every year a new cohort comes through.

‍

We see this in our own partnerships. In a content licensing partnership with Goodbody, 70% of customers reported high satisfaction, and 65% of members who engaged with one article in a week came back for more. A $50,000 content investment can clear more than 100% ROI just by reactivating 1,000 dormant users at $50 ARPU. The same economics apply to keeping novice investors engaged.

What good support looks like

Above everything else on the list, the thing to get right is proactive contact before volatility hits. Plenty of firms fail at this, or even go quiet when markets get shaky, right when investors are most anxious and most likely to act on impulse. Staying present with investors through the dip matters as much as the warnings that come before it.

‍

Further, generic reassurance won’t resonate the way personal context does. “Markets go up and down” means very little compared to something specific to a customer’s portfolio, goals, timeframe or recent activity.

‍

Vanguard research attributes roughly 150 basis points a year to “behavioral coaching” that prevents investors from making poorly timed changes during volatility. That’s advisor-led coaching rather than automated nudges, but it’s evidence that this kind of intervention has value. Nudges built around small, habitual contributions work better than one-off lump sums, because strong habits built over time survive a downturn better than a single decision.

‍

That’s how we structure our own content, such as news – what’s going on, what it means, and why it matters to you. Those three requirements turn a single market headline or one-off alert that an investor skims and forgets, into a relevant, habit-forming check-in. 

‍

Here’s a real example of that from one of our US customers, who emailed us to say that Finimize helped her get her first mortgage. She signed up to our daily newsletter because she felt she didn't understand finance. She read it every day. Over those months, she picked up how interest rates work and how markets move, and the barrier came down. Finance stopped feeling like something that wasn’t for her, and she walked into a bank and sorted it out.

‍

The best trigger for a check-in is activity itself, as it reflects what the investor is doing; fixed 30-, 90-, 180- and 365-day milestones are a reasonable fallback. Either way, the trigger only works if there is content ready to go with it: a library mapped to each milestone or activity signal, not something written on the fly. 

‍

Tone must match the segment, too. A 28-year-old first-timer and a cautious 60-year-old nudged in via a support programme will need different reassurance at different times.

How content closes the gap

Commissioning more research or adding bigger warning labels at the point of sale misses the point, because this isn’t a knowledge problem. The fix is content, and it doesn’t have to be built from scratch. 

‍

Whether it’s bespoke content built around a firm’s investor journey or licensed content Finimize has already proven works, the principle is the same: consistent, well-timed material across the whole lifecycle, not just at onboarding.

‍

Our Select investing content licensing platform offers a way to embed this kind of ongoing support directly into a new, novice or experienced investor's journey. 

‍

Promote puts your brand in front of investors who are ready to take the next step through guide and podcast partnerships and the Modern Investor Summit event series.

‍

Let’s talk about what this could look like for your investors. Get in touch.

‍