More ETFs and savings plans, fewer shares. Banks and financial intermediaries are sensing a shift among the under-30s

“A far-reaching shift is underway in the way younger investors learn, engage with the market and define the purpose of wealth,” Marianna Mamou, Chief Investment Officer at UBS Global Wealth Management and author of the recent ‘The Great Wealth Transfer Report’, which investigated young people’s investment choices worldwide, told Il Sole 24 Ore. It should be emphasised that these choices highlight significant differences between the Italian context and the international one, which is characterised by greater dynamism. In fact, the manager explains, summarising the survey’s findings: “Millennials and Generation Z tend to show a greater appetite for risk and to invest earlier, partly driven by their longer investment horizons. They also often look beyond traditional assets and tend to be more open-minded and engaged, asking questions, exchanging ideas with their peers and seeking to play a part in family conversations about wealth.”

These are all trends that are only just beginning to emerge in Italia, partly thanks to the work on education by financial intermediaries and professionals. To realise this, one need only have a brief conversation with various types of operators: from a SIM with a long-standing tradition in online trading, to a network bank characterised by a significant number of advisers under 30, to a commercial bank with a strong hold among the younger generations, and finally by examining the choices of the youngest clients of private banking.

According to an internal study carried out by Directa Sim last August, the most significant development over the last five years concerns portfolio composition: in 2021 ETFs accounted for 45.7 per cent of the assets held by the under-40s, whilst by 2025 this figure had risen to 66.5 per cent. Over the same period, the proportion of individual shares fell from 35.1 per cent to 11.1 per cent. Among the under-30s, the trend is even more pronounced, with ETFs accounting for over 70 per cent of assets. There is also a significant rise in the popularity of regular savings plans: more than a third of the sample have set up a PAC.

The picture that emerges is one of investors who are cautious and selective in their choices, very different from the active traders who represented the core segment in the early days of online trading, in the early 2000s: among those under 30, around a third did not place any direct orders during the year and another third placed between 1 and 5. Overall, almost nine out of ten young investors do not place more than 20 orders a year.

Among network banks, a prime example is Banca Mediolanum, one of the advisory firms with the lowest average age of its professionals, which recently announced a plan to recruit 1,500 young advisers over the next three years. This policy has already borne fruit in terms of attracting young customers: over the last five years, the number of the bank’s customers under 30 has risen from 118,000 to 229,000, an increase of almost 100 per cent.