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PRIVATE INVESTOR SURVEY
The following survey was carried out on High Net Worth and sophisticated investors, over six days in April 2015. The survey covered
all the various tax-efficient investment schemes (EIS, SEIS, BPR and VCTs). The survey was conducted by a third party survey panel of
investors and overall we had 92 responses in total.
While this survey was conducted previous to the 2015 Budget announcements, we expect that their reasons for investing or not investing
given at the time would be similar today.
DO YOU CURRENTLY INVEST IN
ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TAX-
EFFICIENT INVESTMENTS?
WHAT IS YOUR AGE?
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE
YOUR LEVEL OF INVESTMENT
EXPERIENCE?
DO YOU HAVE A FINANCIAL
ADVISER?
WHAT PERCENTAGE OF YOUR TOTAL PORTFOLIO WOULD YOU
GENERALLY FEEL COMFORTABLE PLACING IN TAX-EFFICIENT
INVESTMENTS?
The majority (74%) of our survey
respondents do not currently invest
in the various tax-efficient investment
schemes. However, VCTs were the most
commonly invested in (17%), with EIS the
second (11%), BPR 7% and SEIS 3%.
VCT investors need to have a higher
capacity for loss and therefore much
younger investors who are less wealthy
may be excluded, as may much older
investors who do not have time to
overcome any losses. A large number
of private VCT investors were 40-50
years old (31%) or 60-70 years old (38%).
Considering the answers in the adviser
survey, it seems there are private VCT
investors in the older age brackets than
advised investors.
As VCTs tend to be a little more difficult
to understand, and even the advisers
have stated that they have difficulty
explaining them to their clients, we
would expect that VCT investors at least
have some investment knowledge.
81% of those surveyed would describe
themselves as reasonably experienced,
whereas only 13% would say they are
sophisticated.
It is interesting to see that a significant
number (44%) of these investors are heading
into the complicated VCT investment world
alone, rather than investing on the advice of
a professional (56%).
<30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60-70
>70
Sophisticated
Reasonably experienced
Little or no experience
<5%
5%-10%
>10%
60% of the investors stated they would feel comfortable placing 5%-10% of their total
investment portfolio in tax-efficient investments, including VCTs. This fits nicely with the
46% of the advisers surveyed, who felt the same. A good portion (30%) felt a little more
cautious, only comfortable with less than 5% of their portfolio in these investments.
30%
NONE
OF THE
ABOVE
3%
SEIS
11%
EIS
7%
BPR
17%
VCT
74%
60%
10%
13%
Yes
No
56%
44%
81%
6%
6% 6%
13%
6%
31%
38%