The advice gap is usually described as an absence: a large number of people who need financial advice and do not get it. That framing is comforting and it is wrong. Gaps in what people need to know do not sit politely empty until a qualified person arrives. They get filled. Research commissioned by IG and reported on 21 August 2026 puts a number on what filled this one: of 2,000 UK adults who invest, 41% had acted on investment advice, tips or inspiration seen on social media. Of those, 45% went on to lose money — 18% of everybody surveyed — at an average reported loss of £802.
For an accountant that is not a story about influencers. It is a statement about the clients whose accounts you signed off this year. Roughly two in five of the ones who invest have already taken a financial decision on the strength of something they scrolled past, and close to half of those are out of pocket for it. They did not tell you, because you never asked, and because the question did not feel like it belonged in a year-end meeting. Meanwhile they told nobody regulated either — on the lang cat’s State of Advice Report 2025, only 9% of UK adults had paid for financial advice in the previous two years.
What the research actually found
Two separate pieces of work land in the same place, which is what makes the finding hard to wave away:
- IG, surveying 2,000 UK adults who invest: 41% acted on investment content seen on social media; 45% of those lost money, equivalent to 18% of all investors surveyed; average reported loss £802.
- TSB, reported alongside it: 32% of UK adults had acted on financial advice on social media in the previous twelve months. Of those, 56% lost money, at an average loss of almost £700, and 59% said they regretted acting on it.
The regret figure is the one worth pausing on. A majority of the people who acted wish they had not — which means the demand behind the behaviour was never really demand for social media. It was demand for an answer, met by whatever was nearest. Writing on the same day, Professional Adviser’s editor argued that as damaging online advice runs rampant, advisers have to be visible. The same logic applies one step earlier in the chain, to the professional the client actually speaks to.
Enforcement, for its part, is real but thin on the ground. A Freedom of Information request by Investment Week, reported on 21 August 2026, found the FCA had pursued two operations against finfluencers over illegal financial promotions between 1 July 2023 and 10 July 2026 — one started before July 2023, the other in 2024 — at a combined cost so far of almost £250,000, with one reaching trial over the promotion of an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme. Two operations across three years, against a feed that refreshes every few seconds. Regulation is not going to out-post the internet.
Run the rate over your own client list
The numbers above are survey percentages, not a claim about anybody’s clients. But they are the best available estimate of a rate, and a rate can be applied. The figures below are illustrative arithmetic on a hypothetical practice, not a finding about any real firm:
- A practice with 400 personal tax clients who hold investments of some kind.
- At the IG rate of 41%, roughly 164 of them have acted on a social media investment tip.
- At the 45% loss rate within that group, roughly 74 have lost money doing it.
- At £802 each, that is around £59,000 of losses sitting inside one client list.
Fifty-nine thousand pounds spread over seventy-four people is not, on its own, a catastrophe. Nobody is retiring poor because of £802. The reason the figure matters is what it reveals about the decision-making, not the damage: seventy-four clients demonstrated that when they have a financial question and no regulated answer, they will act anyway. The £802 is the cheap version of that behaviour. The expensive version is the same instinct applied to the pension, the business sale or the estate — where the lang cat puts the average new advised client portfolio at £411,000 and the average IFA client age at 59. A client at 59 with a decision of that size is not a hypothetical. They are on the year-end list.
Nobody waits for good advice. They take the nearest available answer, and the nearest available answer is free, confident and wrong about half the time.
Why the accountant hears it first
There is a structural reason this lands on the accountant’s desk rather than anybody else’s, and it has nothing to do with expertise. It is contact. An owner-managed client speaks to their accountant at the year end, at the tax return, at the VAT quarter and whenever something unusual happens. Under Making Tax Digital that contact is becoming more frequent still, as we set out in the quarterly signal. The same client may go a decade without a conversation with anyone holding regulated permissions.
So the accountant is where the question surfaces. Not as a question, usually — as an aside. We put a bit into crypto last year. My brother-in-law says I should be doing something with the money in the company. I saw a thing about pensions being taxed and now I’m not sure whether to bother. Each of those is a client telling you they have an unanswered financial question and a source of answers that is not you and is not regulated. The signals in the numbers are one half of the picture, and we covered those in the six signals already sitting in your client file. This is the other half: the signals in what the client says out loud.
The failure mode here is not an accountant straying into regulated advice. It is the polite deflection — that’s not really my area — which is true, accurate, and leaves the client exactly where they were, with the video still being the best answer they have received.
What the regulated alternative can and cannot see
It is worth being precise about what has changed on the regulated side, because something genuinely has. The FCA’s targeted support regime is now live, allowing firms to suggest a course of action to a group of consumers in similar circumstances without providing a full personal recommendation. We wrote about it in targeted support is live. For a salaried consumer with one workplace pension, it is a real improvement on nothing.
Its limit is the same as its design. Targeted support works from what the provider holds — typically a single pension or investment account. It cannot see retained profit sitting in a limited company, a director’s loan account, a personal guarantee on a new lease, or a buyer’s approach that arrived by email last month. For an owner-managed client, the balance sheet is the context that decides the answer, and only one professional has it in front of them. That asymmetry is the whole reason accountants and financial planners working from one picture beats either working from half of one.
Two things worth doing this week
First, add one question to the year-end agenda. Not a compliance question — a conversational one. “Is there anything you’ve been reading about, or thinking of doing, with the money that isn’t in the business?” It takes twenty seconds, it recommends nothing, and it converts an aside the client would never have raised into information you can act on. Most firms who try it are surprised by how often the answer starts with the phrase I saw something about.
Second, write down what you will say next. The moment a client discloses a social media-driven decision, there is a short factual answer that is entirely within an accountant’s remit: promotions of investments to UK consumers generally require approval by an FCA-authorised firm; an individual posting a tip almost certainly does not have that approval; and no video knows the client’s tax position, their commitments or their capacity for loss. Then, if a regulated question remains, say plainly that it sits outside the practice’s scope and that someone authorised can look at it properly. What that handover involves in practice — who does what, and what the accountant stays responsible for — is set out in anatomy of an introduction, and the boundary itself in accountant and adviser: who does what.
What is not settled yet
The research figures above are survey findings, and survey findings carry the usual caveats: IG’s sample was 2,000 UK adults who invest, TSB’s covered UK adults more broadly, and self-reported losses are self-reported. The direction of the two studies agrees; the precise percentages should be read as estimates rather than measurements.
What is genuinely open is the policy response. The FCA’s targeted support rules are new and their practical reach will only be visible once firms have been operating them for a full year. Government interest in restricting under-16s’ access to social media is live but unresolved, and it does nothing for the 41% of adult investors already acting on what they see. Enforcement, on the FOI numbers, is running at two operations in three years. None of that is going to change before the next year-end meeting in your diary.
Which leaves the position roughly where it started, only now with figures attached. Clients have financial questions. Something is answering them. Somewhere between 45% and 56% of the time, depending on which study you read, the answer costs them money. The professional best placed to notice is the one who already has the file open — and the useful move is not to answer the question, but to make sure it reaches somebody who can.
Common questions
Is this really an accountant’s problem rather than an adviser’s?
It is an accountant’s problem in one narrow but important sense: frequency of contact. Most owner-managed clients speak to their accountant several times a year and to nobody regulated at all. The lang cat’s State of Advice Report 2025 found that just 9% of UK adults had paid for financial advice in the previous two years, while 91% of those who did found it valuable. That combination means the accountant is very often the only finance professional in a client’s year. Nobody is suggesting the accountant should answer an investment question. But being the person who hears it first, and who knows a real answer exists elsewhere, is a genuine position of responsibility rather than a bystander’s seat.
What can I say when a client asks about something they saw online?
You can say what it is, what it is not, and where a real answer comes from — all of which is factual rather than regulated. It is fine to explain that content promoting a specific investment to UK consumers generally has to be approved by an FCA-authorised firm, that an individual posting a tip is very unlikely to have that approval, and that no video knows the client’s tax position, their other commitments or their capacity for loss. What you should not do is offer a view on whether the specific investment is suitable for that client, or steer them towards an alternative product. Describe the position; leave the recommendation to someone authorised to make it.
Does the FCA actually pursue people who post illegal investment promotions?
Yes, though the volume is small relative to the amount of content. A Freedom of Information request by Investment Week, reported by Professional Adviser on 21 August 2026, found the FCA had run two enforcement operations against finfluencers between 1 July 2023 and 10 July 2026 — one begun before July 2023 and one in 2024 — at a combined cost so far of almost £250,000, with one of them reaching trial over the promotion of an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme. Enforcement of that kind matters, but it is retrospective and expensive. It does not reach the client who has already acted, which is why the conversation in the room still matters more than the enforcement notice.
Doesn’t the FCA’s targeted support regime solve this?
It helps, and it is a genuine change. Targeted support lets firms suggest a course of action to a group of consumers in similar circumstances without delivering a full personal recommendation, which puts something regulated between the client and the internet where previously there was nothing. What it cannot do is see a client’s balance sheet. It works from what the provider holds — typically one pension or one investment account — so it does not know about the retained profit in the company, the personal guarantee on the lease, or the buyer who made an approach last month. For an owner-managed client, the picture the accountant holds is still the picture that decides the answer.
How do I raise this without it sounding like I am selling something?
Ask rather than tell, and ask it as part of the ordinary year-end conversation rather than as a set piece. Something as plain as “is there anything you have been reading about or thinking of doing with the surplus?” gets you the information without any implication that the client has done something foolish. If the answer involves a regulated product, the honest next line is that this is outside what the practice can advise on and there is someone who can look at it properly. That is a factual statement about scope, not a pitch — and it is far easier to say in a meeting the client already expected to have than in a call that arrives out of nowhere.