Targeting ‘Attitudes’ Key to Closing Advice Gap

Why It Matters

By converting behavioural insights into actionable advice, firms can unlock a massive pool of idle savings, reshaping the UK’s retail investment landscape and driving revenue growth for wealth‑management providers.

Key Takeaways

• Attitude-based support lifts investment 30% vs demographic models.
• Women investors up 31%; men up 16% under attitude approach.
• New investors see 53% increase; existing only 14%.
• UK‑biased recommendations boost investment 47%.
• £610bn (~$775bn) excess savings could be mobilized.

Pulse Analysis

The UK faces a persistent "investment gap" where households hold an estimated £610 bn in excess cash that could be deployed into equities, bonds, or diversified funds. Traditional advice models have relied heavily on demographic segmentation—age, income, or location—often overlooking the nuanced psychological factors that drive financial decisions. The Targeted Support framework, launched in early April, seeks to bridge this divide by embedding behavioural data into digital advice pathways, offering a more personalized experience that resonates with investors' underlying attitudes toward risk, returns, and domestic assets.

The recent TISA‑Nottingham study provides the first large‑scale experimental evidence that attitude‑centric recommendations outperform demographic‑based approaches by a substantial margin. Women responded with a 31% uplift in investment, while new entrants to the market showed a 53% surge when advice addressed their specific concerns about risk aversion and UK home bias. These results align with behavioural finance theory, which posits that perceived relevance and emotional comfort are critical levers for action. For wealth‑management firms, the data suggests that integrating attitudinal profiling into robo‑advisors, client onboarding, and content marketing can materially increase asset inflows and client engagement.

Looking ahead, the implications extend beyond individual firms to the broader financial ecosystem. Regulators and industry bodies may encourage or mandate the use of attitude‑based disclosures to improve consumer outcomes, while fintech innovators can differentiate themselves by building AI‑driven engines that continuously refine attitude signals. As the UK’s excess savings pool approaches $775 bn, firms that successfully translate behavioural insights into scalable digital journeys stand to capture a significant share of new capital, reshape investment habits, and ultimately narrow the advice gap that has long constrained retail participation.