Retail investors prioritize being treated fairly, survey finds

Where the Priorities Actually Cluster

The top three outcomes — treated fairly (56%), regulatory compliance (53%), advisor qualifications (49%) — sit within seven percentage points of one another. The bottom two — innovation (21%) and new product development (13%) — fall roughly twice as far below the leader. Innovative Research Group ran the fieldwork in May 2026 across advised, DIY, and hybrid segments; the ranking held across all three. The 13% product-development figure is the one broker product committees should be reading. The typical retail client is not asking for crypto perpetuals, prediction-market contracts, or private-asset funds to land on the platform. They are asking for the existing relationship to be cleaner. FAIR Canada's executive director Jean Paul-Bureaud characterized the response bluntly: investors "want the industry to get the basics right."

Audit Targets on Existing Accounts

Translate the survey wording into testable checks against your current setup:

• Fee schedule. All-in cost per order, not the headline spread or commission. Markups on fixed income and OTC equity trades should be itemized on the contract note, not aggregated into a principal quote.

• Suitability. Documented KYC / KYP refresh intervals. If the last update is older than twelve months on an unchanged portfolio, the appropriateness workflow is stalled.

• Conflict disclosure. Payment for order flow, affiliated product-shelf routing, and revenue share with fund providers should appear in writing — not buried in marketing copy.

• Complaint path. 31% of survey respondents could not confirm a securities regulator exists; 16% could name one. You should be able to name your primary regulator (CIRO, FINRA, FCA, MAS, or equivalent) and reach an independent ombudsman without routing the dispute through the dealer first.

Bureaud flagged the complaint gap as structural: investors who cannot identify the regulator end up over-reliant on the dealer, which suppresses reporting when conflicts surface. Treat that as a defect, not a UX preference.

What to Watch: Product Access Tension

51% of survey respondents supported restrictions on higher-risk products — crypto assets, options, exempt-market — against 43% who backed easier access. A parallel CIBC Investor's Edge poll of 1,001 Canadian adults in April returned 74% describing prediction-market contracts as closer to gambling than investing, with 57% wanting them off investment platforms. Broker product teams reading the demand curve as unlimited appetite for new instruments are misreading the segment. Watch for regulator guidance restricting how — and to which client tier — these products can be distributed; the compliance function should be preparing the distribution controls now rather than after the rule change.

What This Doesn't Cover

The FAIR Canada survey did not ask investors about prediction-market contracts directly, so the 51% / 43% restriction-versus-access split above refers only to crypto, options, and exempt-market products. The AI-infrastructure-stock angle circulating in adjacent retail-investor coverage is a separate conversation — execution quality on single-name equities remains the baseline against which everything else is measured.