Investors in a time of change: better understanding to better support them

Who are listed companies talking to today? Who are individual investors, what are their expectations, and how are their practices evolving?

The 2025 edition of the Individual Investors Observatory provides concrete insight into these transformations. It highlights a clear underlying trend: the profile of investors is renewing and diversifying, with behaviors and expectations that are changing.

An evolving investor profile

The face of the individual investor is changing significantly. The new generation is taking on a growing role, with earlier entry paths into the stock market: 44% of investors started investing before the age of 30.

This renewal is also accompanied by a gradual feminization: 48% of investors under 30 are women, reflecting a broader opening of investment to new audiences.

Another notable development is stronger autonomy. Today, 66% of investors manage their investments on their own, illustrating a more direct relationship with investing and a growing need for accessible, easy-to-understand information.

Key figures from the 2025 Observatory

These trends are reflected in several key indicators, illustrating both the rejuvenation of investor profiles, the evolution of usage patterns, and the diversification of practices in France.

Specific behaviors among investors under 30

Investors under 30 also stand out through specific practices. More connected, they use new tools to learn and make decisions: 71% are interested in simulations and role-playing scenarios to practice investing, while 31% get information about the stock market through social media.*

Their approach to investing is also characterized by a greater openness to new asset classes: 53% of these investors hold cryptocurrencies, highlighting the growing diversification of investment practices.

Increasingly differentiated expectations

These developments confirm a now well-established reality: there is no longer a single investor profile, but rather a diversity of behaviors, experience levels and expectations.

In an increasingly complex financial environment, investors are expressing growing needs for understanding, clarity, transparency and access to information. Investors ‒ particularly younger ones ‒ show a strong interest in educational, interactive and accessible formats, whether through explanatory content, simulations or more direct exchanges.

These findings support reflections on how best to inform, engage in dialogue and support investors over time, taking into account the diversity of their backgrounds and expectations.

Initiatives illustrating these new expectations

Some initiatives concretely reflect these changes, such as the NextWise Challenge. This type of educational program is based on an immersive approach, offering investment challenges within a simulated environment.

These challenges allow students and young investors to learn in a hands-on way, by experiencing portfolio management under conditions close to real-life conditions. Such “learning by doing” approaches are attracting growing interest, in line with the expectations expressed by younger generations.

Better understanding to build long-term dialogue

Beyond tools, these transformations invite to a continuous rethinking of information and communication methods, in order to build a more transparent, educational relationship that is better adapted to the diversity of individual investors.

Placing the understanding of profiles and expectations at the heart of the relationship now appears essential in order to provide clearer, more accessible information aligned with observed changes.

*(LinkedIn, Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc.)