Opinium reveals encouraging new research showing increased investor and IFA confidence compared to April 2020. The data also indicates that ESG investing is on the rise.
Despite the uncertainty brought on by Covid-19, investors and IFAs feel more confident than when compared to the start of the pandemic, according to Opinium.
IFA confidence is up 20% when compared to April 2020, with 72% of advisers rating their business as good in April 2021.
This confidence is mirrored by investors, with 64% revealing they think their investments are in a good state, up from 41% in April 2020.
There has been an uptick in the number of new investors entering the market. Of those IFAs who said they’d seen an increase in advice in the last 12 months (48%), two thirds (65%) said this included new investors, compared to just 12% in April 2020.
ESG investing on the rise
Over two in five (45%) IFAs said they started using or increased ESG investing in April 2021, compared to a third (33%) who said the same in April 2020.
When looking at investors, in April 2020 one in five (20%) said they would start or increase their ESG investing – an intention that has been stuck to, with 19% of investors saying they have done this in April 2021.
More investors looking for advice
Opinium’s research found that investors are moving away from non-advised investment management to a mixture of advised/non-advised (25% mixture of advised/non-advised compared to 31%).
When looking for advice from places aside from advisors, investors’ alternative sources are:
- Investment platforms (31 %)
- Friends and family (27 %)
- Traditional media (26 %)
- Online forums e.g., reddit (19 %)
- Social media (14 %)
- Robo adviser (11 %)
Alexa Nightingale, Research Director at Opinium, comments:
“Given the unrelenting uncertainty of the past year it is encouraging to see confidence among investors and IFAs on the up again. The entrance of new investors into the market and the increase in demand for advice mirror this feeling of positivity. It is also interesting to note that investors have followed through with their intentions to start putting money into ESG investments – with the number of those saying they would start to do this in April 2020 almost exactly the same a year on.”
