Business
The changing face of UK investing – and the platforms fighting for your cash in 2026
As well as economic growth and taxes, cash ISA cuts were one of the main topics of conversation following the Budget, after Rachel Reeves and the government unveiled plans to encourage people to invest.
It’s undeniable that, over the long term, investing money is a better option than merely cash saving. But in Britain, at least, investment hasn’t been part of recent culture or education.
That appears to be changing, with the conversation around investment going on all year – a positive move, even if it only helps people realise there is another option.
That shift is likely to continue into the new year as a multi-organisation advertising campaign gets underway and ISA season rolls around – hopefully encouraging some to take their first steps into a long-term journey.
None of this comes as a surprise to the companies that are our access points to investing: they have been steadily growing in activity all year, and in 2026, you – the potential customer – are likely to take centre stage. Here, The Independent looks at the changing face of UK investing – and how different platforms are trying to win your custom.
Legacy vs Challenger
There are a multitude of investment platforms, as they are known, to choose from. Very broadly, you can split them into established financial powerhouses and newer, tech-led challengers.
Hargreaves Lansdown, AJ Bell, interactive investor, Fidelity – they come into the former category. Your own high street banks do too, most offering investing products alongside your normal accounts.
They are trusted because they’ve been doing the job for years, providing easy access and a pain-free route from your current account to ISA and beyond.
But, also because they’ve been doing it for years, some did the big bank thing: got stuck in their ways and didn’t move with the times, allowing newcomers to sneak onto the scene.
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You’ll have seen or heard their names, watched the adverts, possibly even downloaded the apps: Freetrade, eToro, Trading 212, Revolut, Robinhood, Chip and more.
They all vary, yet share traits: they’ll tend to come with stand-out names, bright colours, low fees, more options or bold adverts.
Which suits you best depends on how you plan to manage your portfolio, how frequently you’ll buy or sell and perhaps how much you want to pay on an ongoing basis, but cumulatively they’ve changed the landscape of investing in the UK.
Of course, the established names have fought back: launching spin-off firms to attract younger customers or bringing everything back in-house to offer professional services, rebranding and re-energising and perhaps even re-realising that British adults’ long-term plans are the next must-win battleground to play on.
The choice is there – now must come the encouragement for more people to choose and use them.
UK investing culture
Speak to those working in or around finance about the push to encourage more retail investors (that’s what the everyday public is referred to as) and one answer comes back over and over: more education and awareness is needed.
But at least something is being done – at least the conversation has been restarted.
“Investing is something that’s being spoken about a lot now, but five years ago it wasn’t the case,” Jordan Sinclair, president of Robinhood UK, told The Independent.
“In Norway or Sweden, they have a great culture of saving regularly, and they have tax wrappers which look a lot like our ISA. But what’s probably missing versus Sweden is how do you educate people on how to use that? How to think about their money, where to invest it.
“Some of our research shows that the average amount people believed you needed to start [investing] was over £2,200. Just to start.
“When you look at some [legacy providers], and they havea minimum amount £500, account fees, £11.95 for the first trade… you can’t blame people for saying ‘I’ll just leave it in my cash account’.
“We see an opportunity to level the playing field, catch up to some of those countries – and we’ll do it in our own way, maybe with still a slight bias towards cash savings but some of the money will be working much harder for customers.”
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In the US, people are far more used to investing as a concept and as a future method of wealth. Statistics are varied because resources invariably classify “investing” differently, but Brits are generally seen to be behind the curve against European nations like Germany or parts of Scandinavia.
Improved financial education in schools coming into the curriculum might bear fruit in a decade, but there’s a big chunk of the population who could be doing more with their money now, if they knew how.
“Where I think there’s room for collaboration is on initiatives to make sure the regulator hears what firms need, and the Treasury is supported,” Sinclair said. “Revisiting risk warnings, educating customers rather than scaring them away. It’s hard to undo what’s been done, but this is about thinking for the next generation, educating today’s under-55s: what about your pension? What do you need for long-term savings?
“It’s not just thinking of today. You add up all these initiatives and the retail investment awareness campaign, all this momentum [that’s what makes long-term change].”
While those saving money might be thinking about this year or next, investing has a much longer timeframe.
For companies that operate in that space, the thinking can be even longer term – decades or more, as many of those banks and investment platforms have been around for.
“We think about what’s now and what’s next at the same time, what customers want and how we deliver something better,” Mr Sinclair explained. “Being in that growth mode is different to being at a [big bank] when you probably try to move one place in the rankings table.”
The big safeguarding concern
For Robinhood specifically, “what’s next” will be an ISA, launching before the end of the tax year in April. That will be a draw for new clients, as new features or services always are, and it’s a product most people already understand.
But when it comes to investing, education and trying to encourage people to start a new financial journey, there’s a wider concern which is especially important on newer tech-led, all-encompassing platforms.
That is: how do you effectively gateway or barricade people who are new to the entire investing arena, away from products which are inherently not suited to them?
Most people, even if they don’t invest now, will still have a broad concept of what you mean if you say “the stock market”.
Yet those same people – slowly and purposely learning about funds or dividends or any other run-of-the-mill term which could genuinely better their financial positions over the long term – are often only one missed finger-click away on their phones (or menu tab on their computers) from much more complex and risky options.
Cryptocurrencies are an obvious one. But there are also frequently options for futures trading, commodities, FX trading, CFDs, leveraged options, and even copycat trading to mimic other investors’ decisions.
There is a strong argument to suggest many of these shouldn’t be accessible by novices until they have either shown competency in standard investing, for want of a better term, or have completed courses to display a thorough understanding of what they are used for and why the risks are far higher.
But the rise of so-called everything apps appears unstoppable, and finance-led firms are part of this.
Choice is great, of course, and many people may prefer to have all their money matters under one roof, so to speak. But it also represents a challenge to not allow companies’ commercial interests to outweigh responsibility towards clients.
The battle for your custom, your money and your attention will only ramp up into 2026.
A requirement, then, must be on those platforms to ensure they educate as well as entice, and provide reliable knowledge as well as potential wealth.