DOI: 10.67733/rlipe.2.1.5 ISSN: 3062-4487

From Popular Advice to Verified Expertise: A Case for Regulating Finfluencers

Ojasi Bhade, Divyesh Mirajkar
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Finance is now trending. What was once perceived as a mundane, tangible, and mechanical activity is suddenly popular on social media platforms and among the primary age group which uses them, teenagers, and young adults. Creators on social media who create simple content for the general public, have produced their own specialized niche focusing on delivering information related to financial markets in a simplified, digestible form, finfluencing. While this has led to widespread popularisation of finance and effective dispersal of general financial knowledge and has enabled the common person to better understand their own financial decisions, it has also led to a prominent rise in financial misinformation on the web. These can be unintentional cases, for instance when creators make finfluencer content without fully understanding the implications of what they preach. They can be intentional as well when creators use predatory affiliate marketing to deliver specific financial advice without full disclosure. Several governments have notified regulations reigning in the negative aspects of finfluencing, but the present regulations are far from perfect and there is still some way to go. This piece adopts a recommendatory tone and attempts to estimate how to better fill the gaps in present regulation.

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