It started with paperwork.
Ahead of becoming a father, I tried to set up a Bare Trust (a basic investment account) for my daughter. What followed was weeks of solicitors, legal fees running into the hundreds of euro, and a process so heavy with paperwork it felt designed to put you off. On top of that, the fees on offer were steep, and any growth in the account would be taxed heavily. I remember thinking: this is meant to be for children. Why does it feel like it's built for people who already have a financial adviser and time to spare?
That was the start of it. But it was Christmas, a few months later, that showed me the problem was bigger than one form.
Then it was Christmas.
I was sorting out presents for my nephews, and I wanted to give them more than the usual fifty euro in a Revolut account, or a voucher spent by January. I wanted to give them something that meant something. But there was no easy way to do that, not without opening a separate account in their name, going through the same paperwork all over again, just to give something as small as a Christmas present. So I sent the fifty euro, same as always. And I sat there afterwards thinking: that's gone by New Year's. In fifteen years, nobody will remember it.
Now, I'm not saying don't give physical gifts to your loved ones. Some of my best childhood memories are tied to a present I unwrapped on Christmas morning, the kind of thing I still think about decades later. I'm not standing here telling any grandparent to stop spoiling their grandkids or any aunt to stop handing over a fiver at the door. What I'm saying is the option should be there too, depending on the situation. Sometimes a child needs the toy under the tree. Sometimes what they'd actually benefit more from, ten or fifteen years down the line, is that same fifty euro given a chance to grow. Both things are gifts. Right now in Ireland, only one of them is easy.
We all know the other side of this too. Every family has that granny who'd slip you a few quid at the door, "don't tell your mother." The Communion money that got you a bike, or half a bike. The tenner from an aunt every Christmas. That instinct has never gone away in Irish families. What's never existed is a simple way to take that same generosity and give it room to grow into something real, when that's the right call, instead of it being spent over a weekend and forgotten.
Put those two things together: a broken process for setting up a child's investment account, and a family gifting culture with nowhere useful to go when a family wants more than a moment, and you start to see the actual gap. It isn't really about paperwork, or even about fees. It's about access. Retail investing in Ireland has always felt like a members' club: something for people with a financial adviser, a big statement in the post, and jargon nobody bothers explaining. For everyone else, the honest truth is that investing simply isn't something they were ever taught, or ever given an easy way into.
I only learned this by accident.
I know that firsthand. I only learned to understand investing by accident, through a small bit of workplace equity that landed in my lap rather than anything I sought out or was taught. But once I had a stake in something, I paid attention to it differently. I watched it. For the first time, I actually understood why people say money should work for you instead of just sitting there. That shouldn't be down to luck, or down to who you happen to work for. Every child should get that same feeling early, from someone who loves them, not by accident, ten years into a career, but because a Communion gift or a birthday tenner was given somewhere it could actually grow, when that was the right thing for that family.
That's the gap Legacy is built to close.
That's the gap Legacy is being built to close. Not just the Bare Trust paperwork, though that needs fixing too. The whole gap between family generosity and family financial literacy: making it as easy to gift into a child's future as it is to hand over the cash, stripping out the forms and the jargon, and giving families the option to watch that gift grow into something a child can look back on and understand, not just remember receiving.
Because that's what gifting is really for. Not just the moment at the door. The years afterwards.
We're building this now, ahead of Ireland's Q1 2027 launch window. If you'd like to be one of the first families to get access, you can join the waitlist.
Gavin Eiffe, Founder and CEO of Legacy Financial Technologies Ltd.
Legacy provides a technology platform, not financial or tax advice. The value of investments can fall as well as rise. Capital is at risk.