I went to Barcelona in two thousand and two having graduated in two thousand with a degree in politics, and didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and thought young man, time for some adventure, time for some fun, but then the reality of having to work for a living got in the way, and I was fortunate enough to find in Barcelona a job with an online startup that were producing quite revolutionary publications for UK based IFAs.

Okay.

And that kicked me off in the in the financial services.

So you hadn't previously had any work in financial services?

Not at that point, but then led on from there to working in the European pensions and investments market with institutions and asset managers on a pan European basis.

Right.

Moving back to the UK, worked with a firm who were in the hedge fund market. And got to travel the world meeting the hedge fund community, which was lots of fun. But that led to the financial bubble in two thousand and eight, at which point I moved into retail with Shares magazine, who were then subsequently taken over by AJ Bell, the very successful investment platform, whom I left in December and now find myself as an investment trust Ned, and I'm very happy to be there.

Yeah, fantastic. And there's there's that there's that thread I guess that's that's always been around bringing investors and investment products together, that's quite unique in the space. Did you realise at the time when you were navigating your way through that journey?

It's something I realised more in hindsight. At the time I was following my interests and I didn't realise the kind of the continuity, the thread that brought it all together, but I've had a strong feeling that kind of retail and retail investors, that's where I wanted to head to. Hedge funds was kind of exciting and sexy at the time, but I didn't really feel a personal relationship with it.

The retail market, that's where I wanted to be, and there was only really in hindsight that you could see the kind of the continuity with all those different roles.

Yeah. Did you go, because you went from institutional into retail, there stuff that you could take into that space and sort of reflect on to make you better or more thoughtful of how you approached retail marketing?

I think very, very different, very, very different. And I think the key differences around the retail is more emotional, and that's something I might bring up later, what you're doing for retail for them individually matters so much more than perhaps it does for institutional. You have professionals who have maybe more of an analytical or a framework within which they operate, and whereas retail is messy, it's exciting, it's difficult. So it's really I think the lessons can go the other way, There's probably more that institutional can learn from retail.

Right, interesting.

I think that that's a far more challenging market to operate in.

Yeah, how interesting. Let's go back to what you mentioned about A. Bell acquiring Shares magazine.

Twenty twelve, is that right? That's right, yep.

And then when previously spoken you said there was almost a period when not a lot happened, about four years, and then suddenly everything happened.

Talk us about that time and what was it that created that inflection point?

The story is we at Shares magazine, we had a publication, a physical magazine that you could go and buy in the shops, we also had a business where we sold data and content to third parties. And the story is Andy Bell was approached to see if he wanted to buy content and he said why don't I buy the company instead? So it became internalised into the business, but I think at that stage the priorities were developing the investment platform and functionality, the app, you see and use today, the integrations of the media business did take those four years. And the big change was going from a magazine in the shops, to really a customer magazine for customers of AJ Bell and added value to that platform proposition, a differentiator for AJ Bell customers.

So we stopped printing the magazine and we became a digital only publication, which at the time ten years ago was scary. At the time media and publishing has been difficult for a very long time, the costs are very high, sales are difficult, it was sometimes a last resort for a publication that couldn't make the print business work.

Right, yeah.

But we were choosing to do this to make it better, rather than being a defensive move, was something to make or allow us to reach a larger audience and to be in a format that was more useful to more people.

Yeah a strategic decision.

Yeah a strategic decision, but it was still really scary, you didn't know how it was going to be received, whether it would be successful, and that kind of change and transformation, there was a lot of other commercial considerations. I said we sold data and content to other providers, we had to kind of change our model very significantly.

And part of that change was then establishing relationships with particularly investment trust groups, asset managers, ETF issuers, and the wider funds world, which we hadn't particularly been doing before.

So and what was the reason for that?

Was that in order to generate revenue to replace the presumably the print cash coming In part, exactly.

So Shares magazine started in nineteen ninety nine, and it was really a bit of a tip sheet, so smaller companies focused, it was quite trading for people who are kind of getting in and out of equities quite quickly. Yeah. And over the years it evolved particularly under the editorship of Russ Mould, who's still with AJ a very prominent figure, to being more educational, more focused on longer term investing, but still had a mix of equities, some trading, some funds, and then we looked at the needs of the AJ Bell customer, what was going to be more useful for them, and so then that change again in the content style to better match what they were what would be useful to those customers. On the commercial side, as a print magazine our advertisers were the other platforms. Okay. It might have been Interactive Investor, Hargreaves Langsun, and you can't really have those guys advertising in the customer magazine for AJ Bell.

Of course.

There was we had to close a lot of relationships, finish a lot of relationships that had been very hard you know hard fought for and developed over a really long time, that was quite difficult. Of course. And then build a whole new relationship group with particularly the investment trust market.

So what was your specific role at that point in time? So once you, we've just gone digital, you've said goodbye to some customers, advertisers of the share platform. What was your role then and what was you sort of tasked to do so to speak?

Yeah so there was a lot of admin work closing things down and the kind of management of that, and there's also then data suppliers and websites, there's quite a lot of other things on the go. On the commercial side it was then starting to develop those relationships.

With investment trust? With investment trust exactly.

Start advertising in the digital Okay.

So this was the first time there was a pitch to an investment trust, you can advertise in a publication that is read by platform customers.

Got it.

And there were some who got that straight away, and there's been a guest on the podcast before, Simon Longfellow, really Very good marketer.

Yeah, very good marketer. But he, I would say got it first and embraced it. Right.

I think it was the Was he the first customer or one of the first?

He was the first, I'd say the first substantial significant customer. Yeah. Who could see the potential. Yeah. Who I think with his platform background understood the value proposition very very quickly. Yeah.

The confidence that then gave the rest of the market that Janus Henderson, or Henderson as was I think, were committed to it, really helped then to build relationships with the other groups. And so over the years it developed from being the larger investment managers to really the whole market, know, all the way through the boutiques and the individual, the self managed trust as well.

So what what could they buy? What almost what were the products shall we say that you were offering?

In simple terms, in the magazine, in the digital magazine, they could buy advertising, display ads, and sponsored content. Yeah. So articles that they wrote that we would put into the magazine.

It kind of got to the point, I remember, where you could almost pick and choose, you almost had too many customers didn't you to choose from?

We were very successful, we're in a fantastic position, and that wasn't just our doing, it was a change in the investment trust market that recognised the value of the audience. We had the magazine, we also ran lots of events, and on some of these things there were limited opportunities. There were only so many speaking slots at conferences, there are only so many pages in a magazine, you need to have a level of balance. So we tried very hard not to be perceived to be favouring any particular group, or promoting any fund over another fund, and to be very even handed.

Yeah. And that meant sometimes having to say no, you've kind of had your fair share. I think most of the marketing managers, the buyers if you like, they understood that. Yeah.

And that was also how we treated them in turn. We made sure there was opportunity for the right people at the right time.

I think at the peak you're running about twenty five, thirty events and webinars a year. Mean that's quite a substantial programme for people to on board with. And presumably that gave Investment Trust direct access to AJ Bell investors, which is enormously valuable.

That's right. And so we would for the events, if you were a holder, you'd be notified that the fund was presenting.

Right.

And there were also people who we would invite to events or webinars who were actively that told us they were actively looking for new investment ideas. So they were those typically sophisticated engaged retail investors and existing holders would be your audience. And so for an investment trust manager, fantastic opportunity to connect with those individuals and they know everybody in the audience, everybody on the call is either an existing or potential holder, and they have the means and the platform and the way that they are able to invest.

Yeah at that point, at the kind of peak popularity shall we say, and I'm being you know broad brush strokes here, but at that particular point, were any other platforms doing that as well?

Proposition was unique. At the point of that switch from print to digital, Interactive Investor used to have their own print magazines, and they used to have a digital marketing offer, but that went a long long time ago. Predating all of this that I've described and no other platform has approached it.

I think again Interactive Investor now do have a community, they do have an app and they do try and bring people together, but not in the same way that we had with AJ So during that time I think you had a pretty unique position within the market, because you had essentially a proposition which is the only one available, but you had investment trusts and other products, investment products coming to invest directly to the retail audience.

What did you learn from that period about what works within marketing to things which maybe don't? Are there any you know, nuggets that you can share with the audience?

I think in terms of what works, it's such a difficult question to answer. I think what works for you might not work for someone else. Context performance, there's so many different reasons why that might be the case. But I think the truisms are around continuity, being visible or marketing, call it what you like, over a sustained period.

Yeah. It's not a campaign you can or something you can turn on and off. Yeah. It's not something you can commit to half heartedly if you want to be successful.

Yeah. The most successful, whether it be investment trust or any other financial products, are the ones that you see today, you see in five years time, ten years time, and they build and build and build and build through those good times and bad. I think that out of anything would be the one truism, otherwise it's execution and tactics which change as market conditions change, as media change.

So it's what we're essentially talking about there is that it's ongoing long term brand building.

It's being in it for the long term, absolutely.

Yeah. There's a big marketing paper called The Long and the Short of It, is Les Barnett and Peterfield, but they talk about short term as well as long term brand growth. Short term sales activations, campaigns, to you know to get the spikes of sales activity going, but if it's dealt with long term brand building, that's the way to grow brands and and businesses. So it's it's comforting that you saw that within within your within your area of looking out across the whole market. So again, think you're in that incredibly unique position, so it's yeah, it's good to hear that.

And it was a privilege to be able to see all the different sides of it, to be able to have relationships with investors, have relationships with the product issuers, and be able to see the data. We couldn't share the data, but I could see it, and it was a fantastic period.

That's changed now hasn't it? And obviously the business has taken a different strategic direction.

What's the reasoning behind that? Because I know that it's from a marketer's point of view, opportunity is now no longer there as the market. Is there anything your views on that?

I think it's a real shame personally, both personally and professionally personally, but I think that it was enjoyed by readers, by event attendees, by the people who engaged on the investor side. I think we offered them something, a service that they enjoyed and they took value from.

I think the struggle with investment platforms is their scale businesses, Yeah. And they're trying to service, you know, AJ Bell's case, I think it's three quarters of a million now.

You know, the numbers that the larger platforms have are vast.

Yeah. And it's a different type of business back then.

It's a different sort of business back then exactly. And the customer profile evolves when ten years ago the majority of the customers would have been more sophisticated, more confident, people who want investment ideas, and they are quite active investors.

And they're still there of course, many of the newer customers, there's hundreds of thousands who have come on in the last few years, millions who have started investing in the last few years.

Which is a good thing.

Fantastic. Yeah. But their needs, what they want, could be quite different. Yeah. And the content they want and how they consume it changes, and I think it's difficult servicing different pockets of customers in different places at different times. I would like to think that it's doable, but there we are.

There's a gap and it kind of goes back to the point you made at the beginning that marketing to retail is hard, it is messy because you've got there isn't one size investor, there's not one marketing strategy that you can just cut and paste and it will work for another one. It's complex, it's complicated, and it's yeah unfortunately there's this route in, but I understand why the platforms you know, AJ Bell has taken a different route, but there is a gap there isn't there? I don't know who's going to fill that, but presumably someone will at some point because there is a market need there.

I think so, and I think when it comes from a platform you've got integrity, and you've got trust, and you already have a relationship with those people. Yeah. There are a number of websites where you can, as an investment trust, you could advertise or you can use to promote yourself, other events organisations, and some are more focused on again smaller companies, some might be more focused on longer term investing, but the larger community that you can develop around a platform, I think that that's the opportunity, but there is now a gap for that.

I am interested obviously from an investor's point of view about what they got out of the relationship of having access to them, I think that's a very important point, But the marketer in me is intrigued about the knowledge that you saw with your eyes, because you had access to volumes of data both from marketing impact but to investor types as well, and I just wonder what you learn or you could tell about typical types of investors. I know that there's ways of thinking about when you look across the market, holdings that's in within investment portfolios and your views on core holdings versus standard holdings. What can you tell me about that?

Platforms now are mass market, which makes this quite a difficult question to answer.

And there are groups, there are segments within, or personas, or however you want to kind of categorise within those overall platform customer sets, and there's contradictions within it as well, it's quite difficult when trying to create those personas or those pictures, they can sometimes not tell the whole story. Yeah. Though absolutely, in my opinion, in my experience, and the data that I've seen does suggest that the typical investment trust holder looks very much the same today as they did ten years ago, twenty years ago. It's older white men, southeast of England, with quite significant portfolios who are confident investment decision makers.

That's still the case, but it's not just that. You'll then have groups of people in their 40s and their 50s who are building their wealth or accumulating, who are also investing in investment trusts. You then also have some younger people maybe in their 30s who have also bought an investment trust, not necessarily because they think, I want to buy an investment trust, but because they want space, because they want the theme or the investment portfolio that that product allows them to access.

And so when you look at the typical holding sizes, it depends are you looking at group A, B, or C in those examples, but if we're looking at the first group, the classic investment trust investor, and their individual holdings.

I'd often see an average holding per line, so per fund fifteen thousand, ten to fifteen, nearer fifteen would be a typical holding, and you might have eight of them, ten of them.

You then might have core holdings which might be twenty, twenty five thousand in value, and you might have a very small number of those.

And there are certain products that naturally fit into those different things.

That lend themselves to that. Exactly.

And then for those same people you might have some satellites, more speculative investments, five or six thousand. For the younger investor, five or six thousand, for them that's their core, that might be the majority of their money.

And values therefore decrease as you attract, or your averages decrease as you attract more investors.

So when you consider your share register, if you're able to get access to the data which is very very difficult, if you are told or if you can see that you have a lower average holding size, that's a positive. That can indicate that you have more younger investors, people are building stakes in the company on the register. If you have a very large average, it could show that the holders have been with you for a very long time, accumulated a large stake, but might not have a replacement rate.

So that's the story at AJ Bell and probably Hargreaves Interactive Investor. The profile of customers is quite similar across those big three platforms.

Okay.

I think the Interactive Investor average customer is now the most valuable on mean average, AJ Bell and Hargreaves very very similar.

Just to pick that up, average investment holding on Interactive Investor is higher than Yeah, I believe so.

Okay.

I believe so, and the data that I've seen, but we don't see the Hargreaves numbers anymore since they've gone private. Of course. But I think the Interactive Investor flat fee model has attracted a significant number of higher value investors that has increased their average portfolio size.

But with regards to their investment trust holdings, I would imagine the profiles are pretty similar across all three platforms. On the newer platforms, and that could be trading two twelve, free trade, and that wider group, the numbers of customers they're attracting is very very significant. I believe Trading two twelve are now the largest platform by number of individual customers. Really? I don't know how active they are, or their value, and their values anecdotally are significantly lower, so their holdings might be low thousands, several hundreds, as they start their investment journey, their investing journey.

Yeah, are those platforms more tradie than long term in your perspective?

I think they may have set out to be that way, many of their customers would be. They might also offer access to cryptos for example like eToro or CFDs or other more trading oriented products. I think price savvy investors are also very much attracted by the proposition now that they've built out their full account offerings, so not just ISAs and dealing accounts but pensions, SIPs, and they've widened their investment universe. A lot of these guys started with maybe only equities or US equities in the UK, and now they also have open ended funds, and so investors are able to move a complete portfolio or build a bigger portfolio using those new entrants.

Again thinking about investment trusts and thinking about demand of investment trusts and new, you know, everyone's always talking about younger investor with investment trusts, and when I think about younger investor investment trusts, always think the interesting younger investor is probably between forty and fifty, because that's for me is the exciting younger investor. But lots of people are talking about you know eighteen to thirty or whatever that may be. In your view and the data that you saw, where is that demand coming from when you talk about younger investor and what's do you have a view on that?

I would agree, if I were in control of a marketing budget I would be targeting forty to fifty.

It's very attractive looking for that younger market and you understand the rationale for it, but meeting those investors where they are, buying that media, accessing those people, it's so vast and so expensive, the returns are so far away, it's only really maybe a genuine proposition for the funds that have the resources and can also at the same time target the other ones.

Do everything. If you can't do everything, think there's a greater likelihood of return, there's more demand, you're pushing on more of an open door with that forty to fifty group.

Yeah, well it's targeting isn't it? It's principle of marketing is segment your market and target where you feel is best and then aim materials at that. From the side of the fence I sit in, in you know agency land, I don't often hear boards or marketing teams kind of talking about the newer platforms like Trading two twelve and Toro and whatnot. Do you think that's opportunity from you know from where you are, or do you see that as threat to marketing ambitions for Trustworth? How do you see things?

I think more and more boards will see particularly Trading two twelve start to feature on their registers in the next two three years. I think they're probably already appearing on some. And I think that some of these newer platforms are going be even harder to access for marketers, for investment trust managers, or they're going to be even more challenging to build relationships with than the traditional more established players.

Why is that?

I think there's two reasons. The Hargreaves, AJ Bell, Interactive Investor, they're just bigger firms, there's thousands of people who work at these organizations, they've been there a long time. People move around the industry, you develop personal relationships, you might meet people at events, you know where their offices are, they're UK, a majority of their staff are in the UK.

And they might also have a fund research team, you might have relationship through distribution, they might have an investment trust list or a buy list or an open ended funds list and you find a way in on that relationship. So they're more accessible and they're trying to offer their customers a richer experience with regards to content.

So you might be able to work with a platform on articles, on videos, podcasts, and so that's editorially led, but it's a way in, it's a way to communicate to their end investors. At the moment a lot of these newer platforms, they don't have that content offer. They might develop it, but at the moment they don't necessarily have that content offer.

They are very much more they're more fintech, the fintech first.

Yeah fintech first, app first often.

They might have you know people in the UK but they might be all over Europe. I think they're very focused on growth, very very focused on not just UK growth, often pan European growth.

Yeah, customer acquisition.

Customer acquisition, absolutely.

And their business models, they're low cost or very low cost rely on very large scale. And so their focus, the idea of having a relationship with an investment trust issuer, it's so far away from what they're thinking about. However, so that's all difficult, but if they unlock a new generation of investors, if they're able to get a first time investment trust holder that a legacy platform would not have reached, that's a fantastic thing. So it's both, it's opportunity and threat.

I'm just thinking how interesting that is when you think about the journey that AJ Bell has gone on. Like when you were there it was smaller, it wasn't necessarily mass market, but these entrants are almost coming in at mass market and going for scale with that hunger.

Their ambition, it's I think across fintech and many other industries you see that, and there is this expectation, and it could be the banks as well, you know the Revolutes and that group too, they're not just trying to build a UK business, they're going straight to Global.

Yeah.

It doesn't seem to them to be too difficult or out of their comfort zone.

Let's again, I'm sorry to keep coming back on this, but again you've got such a unique perspective on marketing and platforms and investment trust marketing, and I'm just keen to understand if you saw correlation with increased levels of marketing with increased inflows into the share register. Is there anything you can tell us about that?

Yeah, I would look and you could see over longer terms or medium to longer terms there's certainly a correlation between the investment trust or other financial products that advertise, that market, that promote themselves, and fund flows on platform. I think you can undoubtedly see that correlation, but again it was a process over time, and what would sometimes be difficult to do would be unpicking what's performance, is it marketing over here or marketing over here, was it activities they did on this website or attending a conference, and it's all cumulative. But there are some times where some relationships with AJ Bell, we had some relationships with some trust that only really worked with us.

Right.

So you could look at the share register and our market share, well AJ Bell's market share, and see how much the holding to AJ Bell customers have in this product. Is it over indexing, under indexing? And if it's over indexing and growing and there's no other marketing relationship, I would stand to reason there has to be some sort of correlation with that. However, however David, know the idea that one can buy fund flow, that you can, we'll go and give, you know try and give a platform some money, and it's going to lead to this outcome. No. It's you know the absolute no no in terms of what.

It's more complicated.

Absolutely.

Yeah so I was having a conversation with a broker and we were talking about marketing, seems to be what I ever talk about, but his view on this was the again the importance of you know good old fashioned getting in the weekend papers. He was like get in the weekend papers and you have a big spread on a human interest story, you see the impact of that on the on the share register, often a couple of percentage points on the on, you know, the share register.

And you can certainly see some discrete events, the newspapers, that can have that sort of immediate impact. You see it more easily with a smaller product because the impact is greater.

Of course.

However, again you must remember the circulation of The Telegraph, the Sunday Times, all those broadsheets are not what they were. No. And you are reaching a particular sort of individual. Yeah. I still believe for marketing ROI, PR probably is the most effective.

If you had a very very limited budget and you could afford PR and you got those opportunities, it's a fact, I would always argue it's something that most trust, if not all trusts should be doing because when you do get that exposure and you do build a relationship with a journalist or they do make reference to you, not just one occasion but it builds up, then that's very powerful.

Yeah, but equally it kind of goes back to the point that we're making before is that on its own it's probably not going to do it because you need marketing to be constant.

You do, and it's the relationship I think. The examples I was thinking about when I spoke about someone working with us over time and seeing that change in holding, I won't name the trust, but the manager was based overseas, and when he first came to present no one knew who this guy was. It was a fund that had really very little experience in marketing to retail, or any marketing at all frankly.

Okay.

The manager's English was confident, but clearly not a first language. Presentation skills, I'd give him a D if I was being generous. Yeah. But over the years kept coming back every single opportunity, every six months would try again, and after, and it took some time, because he had developed a relationship and had spoken about what he was trying to do, and then in a year's time or six months time could say, a year ago I said I was going to do this and I've delivered it, and this is what we're going to do next, and built a level of confidence and trust amongst the investor group that were, particular event that we're talking about here, and you could then in turn see that on the register.

Yeah. And so it is that relationship, that continuity, repetition, and building those emotional connections with people where you've got to know someone, you've got confidence in them, particularly if they then can say or show and demonstrate they've delivered what they said they were going to try to deliver.

Yeah, stay the course. The other thing I want to pick up on is often with marketing it's always coming at the point of like grow, grow, grow and you know going after want to use marketing to you know expand the business or and rightly so that's a key part of it. But I always think an often neglected side of marketing is in periods of underperformance, and I personally believe it's a tool to be used to stem outflows as much as it is to grow.

Did you, again in your position, you see any examples of marketing which helps that you know, in periods of underperformance, stemming outflows, or anything there that you could share?

There's products that market all the time through the good times and the bad times.

I think instinctively a lot of people want to pull back when times are tough. They find it very difficult, they want to distance themselves, the manager doesn't necessarily want to stand in front of a room full of people and take tough questions.

But many are up for it, and I think the retail investor wants to buy and hold, they don't want to sell, it's an emotionally more difficult decision to sell something than it was to buy it in the first place.

Yes of course.

At the same time, That's a behavioral characteristic of science fiction.

If you have something you know has been underperforming, and I am as much you know a victim if you like of this, there are big name fund managers who have underperforming funds, and you leave it sat there, and it sat there, and after when are you ever going do with anything about it? But if you believe in the investment thesis, why you bought it in the first place, you still believe in today, you understand it, I think that defensive approach is very very important because there are three thousand other funds, products, things they could go and buy that are trying to explain to them why they should make that sell decision. But I don't think they want to sell. So if you can give them a reason not to sell, if you can keep that relationship intact, I'd very much support that. I think it's very important, I agree.

Yeah. Let's move forward now to, let's think, talk about where you are now, because you've recently taken on your first investment trust board role.

I'm with CT Global Managed Portfolio Trust.

Congratulations on that I'm interested to understand how things look so to speak from the other side of the fence. What's been your reflections of you know first few months in the role?

Well it's a very very different role, and so far it's been terrific. I've really enjoyed this, getting to know the rest of the board and how seriously and how deeply they think about the trust, the investors, and everything around the fund.

I've been really encouraged at how welcoming and open they've been with me, how much they want to learn, and how enthusiastic they are for the fund, which I am as well, it's a fantastic product. And so, so far it's been really interesting.

The first board meeting, full board was pretty scary, I don't think I embarrassed myself, you know I've been invited back, so far so good.

Oh fantastic, and you've got some very experienced board members on there as well which lovely. From hearing what you're saying, you're actually an advertisement for investment trust because it's lovely to hear how impressed you've been even within the industry when you go into the boardroom and you're suddenly seeing the inside of a boardroom about the care and attention that the boards are taking for investors.

Yes, and I think the trust that I'm with, the way I use the word since it's in the DNA, it's a retail first investment trust. Yeah. The rest of the board are completely aware of that. What I'm surprised about perhaps David is how few people from the platform world there are in the Ned world.

Right.

AJ Bell, Hargreaves, who've been going thirty years or so, there's been generations of executives that have worked in those businesses.

And surprised they haven't transferred.

Where are they? Yeah. Where are they?

And have they not wanted to make that step? Have they not been invited? They're not being considered? Yeah. I'm surprised at how vital platforms are for investment trusts, how few platform professionals, the AIC are blessed to have Richard Stone, who is obviously from the platform world, so he is someone who can share his experience and advice, but there's only one of him and he's gonna cover that via AIC. And on an individual board level there are very very few platform professionals. Yeah.

And I think there are a combination of, as I said, retail first funds, but it's not always the case. I in my AJ Bell days presented to many many trusts and AJ Bell would be on the register of all of them. Yeah. And there were times there'd be people in the room who would not know who AJ Bell were.

Yeah. They wouldn't know the service that we provided, who our customers were. They had never used or even thought to download an app to see how it worked, whether it be an AJ Bell or Hargreaves or anybody else. And I was sometimes surprised by a lack of curiosity.

Why wouldn't you want to know this name you see on the register? Why wouldn't you want to understand the experience of being a holder on one of these apps?

And so I think the board I'm on, my colleagues, top marks, but it's not necessarily something that can be a unit it's not applied universally.

No, no.

And I think the individual Ned's need to take some personal responsibilities, and you know it's only a small thing, but to understand their holders experience. Yeah.

The other kind of lesson I've learned you know that is we knew it before how difficult it is to have those platform relationships, and it's not now just those you know big legacy names. We mentioned Trading two twelve and Freetrade, as you mentioned there's eToro, there's Saxo Bank, there's Capital dot com, there's Revolut, there's you know all of these other disruptors, banks, platforms, some offer investment trusts, some don't. Yeah. You know is anyone auditing whether their funds even appear on these platforms?

And then if you're looking at how voting works, are you relying on being told if you know who can vote, or are you actually going go and find out yourself?

Yeah, we've And that personal responsibility I think is incumbent on my fellow nerds to be curious and to find out for themselves.

And I think it's shifted hasn't it? Because I've been working in in asset management investment trust space for fifteen-twenty years and retail in many ways was almost a dirty word, know. Retail customers, you've heard the term collectively I'm sure were bandied under Mrs. Miggins when talking about them, quite derogatory I always felt and it's only relatively recently I think that investment trusts in particular suddenly thought right we really need to get hold of the retail audience because of the forces at play on the investment trust from consolidation of wealth managers and such. Everything that the missing lever, great documentary if you haven't seen it, it should be considered. All of these things come in to play, but now, like you say it's up to boards and Ned's to really start to lean in and understand this market.

I think so, and you mentioned Mrs.

Miggins term, and I feel really strongly about this, and having respect for your holders, you know it's corny, I felt in my days with AJ Bell when we had all these events and meeting thousands investors, and some of them you have a better match with, know you enjoy spending time with more than others, and there's some of them more challenging, and there's some who are wonderful, they're all Have history of human life.

They're all valid, Yeah. They all count, they all have their own journey, their own goals, you don't have to necessarily even like them, but you have to respect them.

Of course. Entrusting you into their future aren't they?

Absolutely, and it matters, and I've spoken to thousands and thousands of investors, and the ones that stick in the mind often are the people who've, you know, told you their story, what they're investing for, and you often hear about the pressure people feel taking that responsibility. If you're managing your own pension, that maybe that's your and your wife's or your family's wealth, and you're doing it yourself, to get it wrong it's massive. And the burden that can be for people, emotional burden can be really challenging for people, and then you know if they're dismissed as oh you know like the hoi polloi or these irritating questions from holders, that really gets me.

Yeah and I can tell you have to love them, you have to want to, you have to want to have those relationships.

And be interested.

And to be interested in them, absolutely. You're thinking about what is my fund or my product doing for that person's life? And there is this mix between I think funds or investment trusts that have considered that, and those that just want to sell our products. And they think, well we're running, you know, who's the next buyer, who can we sell our fund to, let's try retail, rather than it being considered the other way around, you know what can we do for them, are we something that's right for them, you know how are we going to help solve a problem these people have?

Yeah. And how are we going to make them part of it? Yeah. And if you're like the sales led, and only sales led, it's all about distribution, we just want to sell some shares to some retail holders, if you throw enough money at it you might be successful with it, but it's not the right way of doing things.

No, it's great to see you speak with such passion about that as well, again it's something I feel myself. Think if we sort of think about taking everything that you've learned and now in your role as a board member, if you had something to share with other investment trusts or other boards, what you'd say as being your takeaway point for them to consider, I mean given what you've just said I think we know, but what if you had to sort of encapsulate that under one point to kind of okay go away, think about this, this is how you can market to retail more successfully, what would that be?

I think, and I'll have said it before to some boards, I think the fact that retail are emotional rather than rational buyers, and they buy a story, what something can do for them and where they are in their life, and presenting simply we're the top performing fund in the last three quarters you know is not enough, or factual, dry factual information, you need to have an emotional connection in a world of choice. There's a great deal of choice for retail investors, and having a reason to choose Fund A rather than an ETF or any other product in the market, you must have that emotional connection with them, and that will sustain and endure through the bad times as well as the good. So think about is there anything you're communicating with holders, potential holders, that generates an emotional response?

I call it the sizzles, know, you can explain what something is, but the why it matters, what's that going to do for you, that's what gets people excited and that's what I think many investment trusts could, that would be my tip, the emotional connection.

That's fantastic. Thank you, thank you so much Roland for sharing all of your insights that you've gained throughout your very varied career, but always with a key natural thread, and I'm excited to see what what the future holds. And congratulations with your your your recent board appointment. I think they're very lucky to have you.

Thanks very much, David. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you for listening today to The Growth Engine. If you enjoyed this episode and like to hear more, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from, and follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates or on hub agency dot co dot u k. Thank you, and see you next time.