Bankers have expressed concern amid a rising trend of people opting to seek financial advice from financial influencers or “finfluencers” instead of approaching licensed professionals. At a recent bankers’ conference in Ireland, several senior bankers pointed out that it was “frightening” how people were getting information about their money from social media.

Brian Hayes, head of the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland told Irish Times that these are “worrying signs”. “There are some worrying signs on investments, that a younger generation of investors are relying on advice from friends and family, or peers, or baseball players in the United States who allegedly know something about how to invest long-term.”

Debbie Byrne, managing director of the An Post postal service, added that the trend is “really frightening”. “What we don’t want is them getting their financial information on TikTok,” she told the publication. “That’s exploded. I think that’s really frightening.”

But it isn’t only the younger generation that seems more inclined toward the finfluencers for financial advice, “it is extending right up to people in their 40s, Byrne complained.

“There is clearly a gap that we as an industry have left if people are looking to influencers on TikTok with no financial or other kind of qualifications,” she said. “So that’s a gap we collectively need to fill.”

Meanwhile, in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently stated that it does not have any immediate plans to introduce distinct regulations governing the activities of social media influencers in the financial markets. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) already has measures in place to address this issue, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said.

“The RBI is not planning to issue any separate guidelines to regulate financial market influencers since the Sebi is already doing so,” news agency PTI quoted Das as saying.

But, while SEBI has expressed its intention to introduce regulations since January 2022, no official guidelines have been issued thus far. The organisation has, nevertheless, been taking selective action against individuals involved in manipulative practices.