Over the past decade, investment trusts have beaten their open-ended fund equivalents 77% of the time, by £31 for every £100 invested. But if you ask British investors what an investment trust actually is – which we did via our Modern Investor Pulse survey – more than four in 10 couldn’t tell you.

And that’s at the informed end of the market, among people engaged enough to answer a survey about trusts in the first place. Among new or passive investors, the real number will be considerably worse.

The problem is that not understanding how trusts work is still the single biggest barrier to buying one. Per our Pulse data, 38.7% of investors cite it as the primary obstacle, ahead of cost (34.8%) and risk (28.4%).

Within that data, there were 20.5% – roughly one in five – who considered a trust and didn’t buy one. That’s a huge commercial opportunity for trusts. Those investors are already past the two biggest barriers – knowing trusts exist and understanding roughly how they work – so converting them costs less. They don’t need comprehension-building content, for one thing. They stopped because of something specific, and that’s a narrower, cheaper problem to solve.

And time is of the essence. In January 2027, the AIC will run a major awareness campaign targeted at 25-44-year-olds, positioning investment trusts alongside ETFs and crypto for a new generation of investors.

If successful, that campaign will create a wave of search interest and curiosity, and the firms with the right content in place stand to capture that demand. Those who fail to meet that new audience with clear information risk losing out.

The fix: lead with relevance, not education

The content that works will lead with how trusts serve the investor, rather than a general explanation of how they function. Whether someone has never held a trust or already considered one and decided against it, they need to know the same four things:

1. What the potential returns and risks look like
2. How it supports their long-term or short-term goals
3. Where it sits within a diversified portfolio
4. How it compares to the fund or ETF they’re weighing it up against

Investors don’t want a lesson on how the back-end of the stock market functions; they need to know what it means for them. And that’s particularly true of the 20.5% – they’re up to speed on the basics, and going more technical or jargon-heavy is unhelpful. Skip the “what is a trust” primer, keep the plain language, and go straight to the specific product comparisons.

Trusts also have structural features funds simply can’t offer, like gearing and income smoothing, which rarely make it into content aimed at investors, despite being exactly the kind of specific, concrete comparison the 20.5% are looking for.

There’s also a timing argument that issuers, platforms and managers just aren’t making enough of. Trusts are trading at an average 9.6% discount to the value of what they hold – the smallest gap in nearly four years, down from 18.8% in October 2023. Again, that’s the kind of fact someone can verify, and it gives investors a reason tied to something concrete rather than just vague reassurance.

Better messaging beats a lower price

Fees are important, but they’re not the deciding factor on their own. 

Trading 212 won Best Investment Platform at the 2026 Finimize Awards, even when fees were stripped out of the ranking methodology, winning on ease of use, trust, range and customer experience. ETFs tell a similar story.

Since 2020, the number of people investing in ETFs in the UK has increased by about 27% a year on average, and fees are an understood, accepted part of holding one, not a barrier to entry. The products winning attention aren’t competing on price, so issuers should be focused on clearer, more confident communication about what the product does, rather than on fees.

The most recognised trusts are riding a well-known asset manager’s brand, like J.P. Morgan Asset Management or Baillie Gifford, but for the many trusts without a big name attached, more awareness spend is not a shortcut – name recognition is not the same as understanding the product.

The takeaway

Specific objections like “the fees seem high” or “I don't understand how it works” can be resolved with the right content. Vague unease can’t be argued with in the same way – it just needs clearing. And different segments of the audience need different content, not more of the same or redundant explainers. 

With the AIC’s campaign on the horizon, the window to get this right is narrowing. Missing it will mean meeting that wave of new interest with nothing to offer it.

Aberdeen Investment Trusts is already doing this well. They were the headline sponsor of the Finimize London 2026 Modern Investor Summit, plus they’re building a 12-part content series with us – sustained content designed to answer specific questions and convert the 20.5%.

If you want to talk through what the right content mix looks like for your trust, get in touch.