Retail investors: democratising UK market access
Geoff Hammond
There are 9.7 million people in the UK with investable assets of more than £10,000 held in cash, and of these, there are more than four million people who want to take at least some form of investment risk. [Note 1]
Retail investors play a major role in capital markets, contributing to market liquidity and driving market sentiment. The London Stock Exchange has long advocated for the greater inclusion of retail investors in UK capital markets so that they can share in the growth of UK companies, and so we continue to seek ways to reduce the friction for investors to access our markets.
The London Stock Exchange offers investors access to Europe’s largest pool of liquidity, giving investors exposure to a range of different asset classes, including blue-chip FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 stocks and our AIM growth stocks, the International Order Book, our fast-growing ETF franchise and fixed income instruments.
On Monday 30th September we announced that from January 2025 we are removing fees for retail investors to access real-time market data from the London Stock Exchange, becoming the first major primary exchange to do so [Note 2]. This means a full waiver on market data monthly end user charges for all customers that qualify as non-professional users. Retail brokers will be able to provide high-quality, real-time data based on liquid markets to eligible customers free of end user charges. This will drive more informed trading by retail investors based on the latest, most accurate data available, and lead to better outcomes for investors in UK securities.
All this means we are bringing additional transparency to UK equity markets and supporting industry objectives to democratise access to capital markets – positive changes that we are driving in partnership with the wider financial markets ecosystem.
The removal of these fees for data access has been welcomed by market participants, including some of the biggest retail brokers in the UK:
“Making investing easy has to be a key priority for the government, regulators and the financial services industry. Ensuring data is readily available at the touch of a button helps make investing more accessible and straightforward for retail investors. AJ Bell customers benefit from live market data through our platform and this initiative should ensure that becomes commonplace for retail investors across the country.”
Charlie Musson
“As a business which already works with the London Stock Exchange to provide our clients with high quality pricing data, we welcome this initiative. We are committed to providing our users with access to more exchanges, all without passing on the market data costs. People should be free to monitor, discover and invest in the stocks that interest them, irrelevant of the exchange it trades on. Initiatives like this will help us continue to offer a more localised trading and investing experience to our users in the UK and around the world.”
Dan Moczulski
“HL is supportive of this move as a part of the wider push to increase retail participation through lower costs, improved information in prospectuses and greater retail access to equity fund raising.”
Tom Lee
“This is an exciting initiative from the London Stock Exchange, and we are fully supportive. Anything that helps level the playing field between institutional and retail investors is not only good for end-investors, but also our industry as a whole. We see this as a great step towards helping to democratise investing, which interactive investor has long been at the forefront of.”
John Dobson
Find out more about London Stock Exchange market data team.
Sources
[1] Source: Retail Therapy - The Centre for Policy Studies (cps.org.uk) | Back to Note 1
[2] Based on publicly available fee schedule information of the top 10 primary exchanges in the world by equity market capitalisation in March 2024 (source: Largest stock exchange operators worldwide as of November 2025, by market capitalization of listed companies). Primary exchange is defined as the primary venue for operating company listings. | Back to Note 2
