Savvy the Squirrel: Is the government’s new investing website really the nuts?

Today saw the launch of a government-backed a campaign to boost investment education and get Britain investing. You can see it here.

I’ve spent years helping beginners take their first steps with money. So I was genuinely interested to see what they’d built.

Then I opened the site.

Four pages and a cartoon squirrel

The entire ‘education’ offering amounts to four web pages.

There’s a short video. A brief paragraph on risk. Three sliding cards describing different investing styles—each with about a sentence of explanation. And a checklist asking whether you’ve cleared your debts.
That’s it.

No explanation of what an ISA actually is.
No glossary.
No guide to what a fund is or how it works.
No calculator showing what your money could grow to.
No comparison of account types or platform fees.

For something backed by the Treasury, the FCA, and 19 leading financial firms, it’s… thin.

The FCA’s own research tells us the two biggest barriers to investing are fear of losing money and a lack of knowledge. This campaign makes a nod to the first—with a cartoon squirrel mascot—but largely ignores the second.

Adverts dressed up as a recommendations

After those four pages, you’re directed to a “find a partner” section — a directory of the 19 firms that paid to be part of the campaign.

This is presented as the natural next step for a complete beginner, which seems at the very least a missed opportunity, and at worst, misleading.

At the top of the list: Barclays, Hargreaves Lansdown and NatWest.

All well-known names, and they have their place in the market, by which I mean they’re a good match for some investors. However, they’re not the cheapest providers by a long way, and they’re certainly not who I would send a nervous beginner to.

Then there’s St James’s Place. A wealth manager where advisers can only recommend their own products. The average client has around £190,000 invested. A nervous beginner with a few hundred pounds is clearly not their target customer.

Robinhood is also included—despite currently offering UK users access only to US-listed stocks, with UK shares and ETFs not expected until later this year.

There’s a clear mismatch here between who the campaign is aimed at—and where it’s sending them.

The platforms that are actually missing

More striking is who isn’t included.

Platforms like InvestEngine, AJ Bell’s Dodl, Trading 212 and Freetrade (consistently ranked among the best for beginners by independent reviewers like ourselves) don’t appear at all.

These are the services where you can open an account in minutes, start with £1, and pay little or nothing in fees. They’ve arguably done more to open up investing in the UK than any awareness campaign.

Their absence matters.

Because the firms that are included paid to be there.

This is an industry-funded campaign, run by the Investment Association – the trade body for asset managers. The Treasury and FCA lending their logos doesn’t make it independent. It just makes it look that way.

What was actually possible

The frustrating part is how easily this could have been better.

A simple Compound Growth Calculator showing what £100 a month could become over 20 years would have done more than most of what’s currently on the site.

A basic Fee Comparison Tool would make the platform directory genuinely useful.

A simple but well-thought-out Beginner’s Guide to Stocks and Shares ISAs would answer many of the most common queries beginners have.

An list of the Best Stocks and Shares ISA for Beginners, compiled by independent reviewers, would have stopped people being sent to totally the wrong platforms for their needs.

None of this is complicated.

We’ve done it. Independently, without government backing or the resources of nineteen financial firms.

The bigger issue

The government is right about the problem.

Too many people in the UK keep their money in cash, losing value over time, and missing out on long-term growth.
But if you want to change behaviour, you have to meet people where they are. You have to explain things clearly. And you have to guide them towards options that actually work for beginners.

But this campaign falls short.

And in trying to simplify investing, it risks making it look easier and more straightforward than it really is.

That’s not the same thing as making it accessible.