Retail Investors Decoded

Hosted by Finimize

Business

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Latest episode

Nov 2026

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EN-US

About the show

The financial industry has a retail investor problem. And it keeps blaming the investors. Host Carl Hazeley is a retail investor himself and the CEO of Finimize. Each episode, he sits down with the people who shape how millions of everyday investors are reached, educated, and converted. Heads of marketing, product leaders, and the occasional industry legend. He asks the uncomfortable questions. Why do institutions keep blaming people for not investing when they are the ones making it so tricky? Why do we keep pushing financial literacy as the solution when the real problem is the system itself? And what actually works when you are trying to attract and retain real investors? Backed by data from a community of 1.2 million retail investors, Retail Investors Decoded is not another corporate podcast. It is the critical friend finance needs: practical, human, and occasionally angry in the right way. If you’re happy with the status quo, this probably isn’t for you. But if you think the industry can do better, you are in the right place. New episodes every three weeks. Talk to Finimize about how we can help you reach modern retail investors: https://finimize.com/business LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7350525208211931136

Listen to episodes

8 recent

November 4, 2026Episode 835 min

How InvestEngine Built A Billion-Pound Investing Platform

Investing apps are built to keep users coming back. But is constant engagement actually hurting long-term investors? In this opening episode of Retail Investors Decoded, Carl Hazeley sits down with Adam Lees, Head of Marketing at InvestEngine, to explore how the platform grew from a handful of customers to billions in assets under management by making investing simpler, cheaper, and less demanding. Adam shares how Reddit communities, ETF partnerships, and word of mouth helped build early trust, why trading-focused apps may be encouraging the wrong investor behaviors, and what really keeps customers invested for the long term.

November 2, 2026Episode 71 min

What Investment Platforms Get Wrong About Retail Investors

What makes people start investing, and what keeps them coming back? Welcome to Retail Investors Decoded, the podcast from Finimize for Business hosted by Carl Hazeley. Hear from the people shaping the investment industry as we explore how to earn investors’ trust, build products they want, and connect with the next generation. Highlights from recent conversations include Brian Byrnes, Maike Currie and Hector McNeil, covering everything from how we talk about money to why more people are taking control of their financial futures. Follow Retail Investors Decoded wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube.

September 8, 2026Episode 639 min

Building a $9bn ETF empire in a world of gold, grifter and alien funds

“ETFs aren’t Harry Potter,” says Hector McNeil. “There’s nothing magic about them.” The edge comes from what you put inside it and being fast enough to get there first. McNeil has done that four times over. He co-invented the world’s first gold ETF and built the first ETC in Europe. Today he’s co-founder and co-CEO of HANetf, Europe’s leading white-label ETF platform, home to 33 brands, roughly a fifth of all European ETF issuers, and $9bn AUM. He joins Carl to unpack: - Why “s...

August 25, 2026Episode 541 min

The CMO teaching IR teams to understand retail investors

A great narrative wins attention. It can't save a bad product and, since the first meme stock wave, retail investors know how to check. Katie Perry grew Public.com's user base from 10,000 to millions through the pandemic and the GameStop era, has interviewed over 100 CEOs and CFOs on their retail investor strategy, and has just published her first book, Ticker Shock, on how retail investors are reshaping the capital markets. She's now CMO of Zero Hash, the digital asset infrastructure compan...

August 6, 2026Episode 435 min

Brian Byrnes on how Moneybox built a pensions and ISA empire

This week on Retail Investors Decoded: Carl is joined by Brian Byrnes, Director of Personal Finance at Moneybox, as the platform approaches its 10-year anniversary with £23 billion in assets and 1.9 million customers. This episode gets into why traditional pension marketing turns customers off, the Moneybox manifesto that never mentions products by name, and why personalized guidance, not just access, is the sweet spot for retail investing. Talk to Finimize about how we can help you reach mo...

July 30, 2026Episode 329 min

BONUS Episode: What investors really think about AI, crypto and market volatility

Finimize Q3 2026 Modern Investor Pulse surveys nearly 3,000 investors worldwide on what they're thinking and how they’re behaving right now. In a bonus episode of Retail Investors Decoded, Carl is joined by Fraser Munro, head of partnerships, to break down what it all means for platforms, issuers and asset managers. In this episode: Why 41% of investors now use AI weekly for research, and why a conversation with a friend starts more investing journeys than talking to a chatbot Why 70% of inv...

July 16, 2026Episode 244 min

Maike Currie: The gender pension gap, finfluencers and why everyone's an investor

Why do so many people have pensions, but so few think of themselves as investors? This episode, Carl sits down with Maike Currie, VP of Personal Finance at PensionBee, former Investors' Chronicle journalist and one of the UK's leading voices on pensions and financial education. They explore why Britain's investing problem starts long before someone opens an ISA, and what the industry, employers and government need to do differently. They get into: Why the gender pension gap is twice the si...

June 30, 2026Episode 137 min

Richard Flynn: UK retail investing, scrapping stamp duty & using AI "intentionally"

Britain has made investing cheaper and easier than ever, yet it still sits at the bottom of the G7 for retail participation. Why? Carl Hazeley sits down with Richard Flynn, MD of Charles Schwab UK. With $13 trillion in assets, 39 million accounts and a history stretching back to 1971, Schwab has spent decades lowering the barriers to investing. As Richard argues, the challenge now is moving people from simply participating in the market to actively engaging with it. They get into: Why incen...