The British investment industry wants everyone to be familiar with a cartoon squirrel. Savvy, the character fronting a 20 million pound advertising campaign, is the latest attempt to boost investment in the UK. The government-backed ‘Invest for the Future’ initiative, launched last Thursday, is supported by some of the biggest financial services firms in the country.
Hargreaves Lansdown, Britain’s largest investment platform, St James’s Place, Aviva, Barclays, NatWest, HSBC UK and Lloyds are among some of the big names involved in the campaign.
Savvy, wearing a green hoodie and proudly displaying his bushy tail, will appear across social media, billboards and TV screens this year. The aim is to encourage Brits to invest their savings, with the Financial Conduct Authority estimating that around 7 million adults hold more than £10,000 in cash savings that could be missing out on the benefits of investing.
Unfortunately, the Government appears to misunderstand incentives. If you want people to invest, public service campaigns are unlikely to encourage a change in behaviour unless the economic circumstances substantially change.
If the Government is scratching its head as to why more people don’t invest, perhaps it should reflect on the fact it is taking a record amount of tax from hardworking British people.
With sluggish economic growth plaguing the country, many Brits do not have very much in savings at all. According to a 2026 Finder survey, the average person in the UK has just over £19,214 in savings. This is, however, heavily skewed by over-55s: the average savings for those under 55 is just £8,888. Many adults are forced to go paycheck to paycheck. A quarter of Brits have £200 or less in savings, and around one in six UK adults have no savings at all.
It is incredibly tone-deaf for the Government to launch this campaign to encourage people to invest their savings, while taking in a record tax burden and squandering billions. The Government is saying it wants investment, it wants economic growth and it wants prosperity, while implementing policies that actively discourage all three.
One tax, in particular, directly discourages investment: stamp duty on shares. UK share purchases are generally subject to a 0.5% stamp tax. The government took £4.7 billion in stamp duty on share trading last financial year, the highest since records began.
The problem is not a lack of mascots, but poor incentives. The UK is one of the few countries in the developed world that still levies a stamp duty on share purchases. This is not a tax on profit, but on participation in investment itself. It is penalising people simply for choosing to invest.
Unsurprisingly, it raises the cost of entering the market and discourages frequent investing, particularly for smaller retail investors. At the same time, allowances for capital gains and dividends have been steadily reduced, further eroding the returns to investing.
When the tax system actively makes investing less attractive, it is little wonder that many savers prefer to sit in cash, if they have it, rather than put their money to work in the market.
Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a problem. When you compare Britain to our American cousins, the disparities are telling. Excluding workplace pensions, only 23% of people in the UK have invested in the stock market, compared to nearly two-thirds in the US. According to a Hargreaves Lansdown survey, over a fifth of respondents thought the difference is due to incentives being better in the US. Interestingly, in the US, there is no federal stamp duty on financial investments.
Abolishing stamp duty on share prices would be an incredible pro-growth measure, and would likely have a greater impact than any number of adverts featuring Savvy the Squirrel. It would boost London stock market liquidity, and align Britain with competitive international standards. Studies show that abolition would likely increase tax revenue overall as well, keeping even the Chancellor happy.
Unfortunately, the political determination to actually introduce pro-growth policies doesn’t seem to exist in this Government. Instead, they seem intent on sticking to just talking about it.
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