At Money20/20 Amsterdam, we hosted a roundtable with 11:FS on the future of embedded investing, chaired by its group CEO David Brear – one of fintech’s most recognisable voices, and someone who’s seen first-hand how digital propositions change customer behaviour.
The conversation picked up on the themes from our joint report, Taking Advantage of the Embedded Investing Opportunity, which we published earlier this year. In it, we argued that investing is becoming less of a standalone destination and more of a capability embedded into the platforms people already use to manage their money.
Around the table, the discussion quickly moved from the scale of that opportunity to the practical question behind it: how can embedded investing help more customers feel confident enough to act?
As one participant put it, investing is often less about the fear of missing out and more about the fear of f***ing up. The risk of doing the wrong thing can feel more immediate than the potential reward of getting started.
That’s what makes embedded investing so compelling. Done well, it can bring investing into more familiar environments, connect it to moments customers already understand and surround the decision with clearer guidance. In doing so, it can make long-term wealth-building feel less remote from everyday financial life.
Make the first step feel familiar
One of the strongest themes from the evening was how far investing still feels from everyday financial life.
A lot of people are already investors, even if they never realise it. Auto-enrolment means millions have exposure to investment markets through workplace pensions, but for many, investing still feels separate, technical and slightly intimidating.
One attendee made the point through a personal example: “My mum would never have thought about investing.” Not because she was disinterested, but because investing never felt like something designed for her.
The goal shouldn’t be to push everyone into investing, or to pretend it’s right for every customer at every moment, but instead to make the first step feel more relevant and less remote – with clearer language, simpler journeys and guidance that helps people understand whether investing makes sense for them.
The UK’s preference for cash shows the scale of that challenge. Our report highlighted more than £280 billion sitting idle in cash, alongside evidence that many savers avoid investing because it feels too risky.
Put investing where the need already exists
For embedded investing, the opportunity is to meet customers before the decision becomes too big or too intimidating. By placing investing closer to everyday money moments, firms can help people build confidence gradually, rather than asking them to make a leap into a separate and unfamiliar world.
The conversation returned several times to the idea that successful embedded finance rarely starts with a revolutionary product, rather by solving a problem in the place the customer already is.
PayPal came up as a simple example. Its early strength wasn’t a radical reinvention of payments but, as one person put it, solving the problem of “I can’t be arsed to find my wallet”.
Monzo’s investment proposition was discussed in similar terms. For new or first-time investors, the product is deliberately simple. Its strength comes from where it sits: inside a high-frequency banking journey, next to everyday money behaviours and backed by a brand customers already understand.
That proximity changes the nature of the decision. Investing no longer has to begin with a customer seeking out a separate platform, comparing providers and decoding a new set of terminology. It can appear alongside the moments that already make people think about money: cash building up, a goal forming, a pension being ignored, a child’s future becoming more tangible or a business wondering what to do with surplus funds.
The product still matters, but where it appears, why it appears and how naturally it fits into the customer’s life may matter just as much.
Design for habits, not one-off actions
As you’d expect in any discussion about investing, regulation came up often. Some saw it as a necessary safeguard, particularly where firms are helping less confident customers make long-term financial decisions. Others questioned whether the industry too often uses regulation as an excuse not to improve clunky journeys.
As one participant put it, “regulation is complex, but is that an excuse to build crappy experiences?” The point wasn’t that regulation is easy, or that firms should treat it lightly. It was that customer experience and regulatory responsibility shouldn’t be treated as competing priorities.
But one of the more memorable regulatory anecdotes came from Ireland and its ‘Special Savings Incentive Account’ (SSIA) – designed to encourage a stronger savings culture, by providing a 25% bonus on every euro saved, provided the money stayed in the account for four years.
The scheme worked in one sense: people contributed. But it didn’t create the consumer habits intended, with many simply choosing to take their money out at the end of the four-year term to purchase a new car. One person around the table joked that it “decimated the second-hand car market in Ireland” – hardly the intended policy consequence.
For embedded investing, there’s a useful warning in that story. Getting people to open an account, make a contribution or take advantage of an incentive isn’t the same as changing their relationship with investing. If the goal is to help more people build long-term wealth, the experience has to support an ongoing habit – not just a one-off action.
That’s where embedded journeys can be particularly powerful. Regular prompts, goal-based tools, round-ups, recurring contributions and education delivered in context can help turn investing from an isolated decision into something customers understand, revisit and build on over time.
Use trust as a bridge into better experiences
Trust was another recurring theme, particularly when the discussion turned to non-financial brands.
It’s a theme we’ve explored before in our piece on what embedded investing can learn from the man from the Pru, which looked at how trust, familiarity and human context helped bring investing into people’s everyday lives long before the language of embedded finance existed. The same principle still matters: investing asks customers to make decisions about their future, rather than simply complete a transaction.
There was plenty of interest in whether supermarkets, telecoms firms, utilities or other consumer platforms could play a bigger role in financial services. After all, in theory, many have the ingredients: large customer bases, regular engagement, useful data and strong brand familiarity.
But the history of supermarket banking shows how easily those advantages can be wasted.
As one participant put it, some supermarket banks “should have been brilliant”. They had customer relationships, data and distribution. They had the opportunity to take the best of modern financial services and shape it around a customer relationship they already owned. Too often, though, the result looked more like a traditional bank behind a familiar logo than a genuinely reimagined customer experience.
The lesson for embedded investing is that distribution alone won’t be enough. Brands may have attention, data and regular customer contact, but the proposition still has to improve the experience in a way customers can feel. As another participant put it, “just adding a logo isn’t enough”.
Pair slick journeys with serious depth
The roundtable also carried a warning for fintechs and newer entrants. One participant described the risk as a “Ferrari body on a Skoda engine”: a proposition that looks impressive, but lacks depth beneath the surface.
The point speaks to a simple reality: investing represents complex new territory – for firms and customers alike – and demands more rigour and operational substance.
People need confidence that the proposition will still work when markets fall, transfers get messy, providers change direction or they need help from a human being.
One attendee shared the example of opening an ISA with a digital provider, only for the firm to exit the UK market and transfer the account to another fintech they’d never heard of. It’s frustrating enough for an experienced investor; for a first-time one, it could be enough to stop the habit before it properly starts.
Trust gets tested when something goes wrong, which is why depth matters. Embedded investing needs the ease of modern fintech, but it can’t be at the expense of the operational resilience that customers need over the long term.
Building confidence is the real opportunity
The good news is that modern, API-first infrastructure has made it faster, easier and more affordable to launch investment propositions with the required level of depth.
That creates a huge opportunity for fintechs and consumer brands to support customers at moments when investing becomes relevant – whether that’s a growing cash balance, a savings goal, a pension decision or a longer-term plan for their family.
But the real opportunity isn’t simply to make investing available in more places. It’s to make investing feel more understandable, timely and worth engaging with.
That means using context to make the first step feel natural, trust to make the decision feel safer and depth to keep customers supported over time.
That’s how embedded investing can bridge the confidence gap: by turning access into action, and action into lasting investment habits.
