Young adults are increasingly using TikTok to learn about money, but most of the influencers offering advice don’t have a professional financial qualification to do so.
Social media is now a popular source of financial advice, especially for young people and first-time investors are increasingly citing it as a key influence.
A content audit from Broker Listings analysed 150 ‘finTok’ videos (financial TikTok), each with over 100,000 views and finance-related hashtags to assess their credentials, accuracy, and disclosures.
The research found three-quarters (74%) of these videos did not feature a clear statement of professional financial qualifications, and 61% mixed advice with broker mentions, affiliate links, course sales, or product plugs. The content creator’s incentive wasn’t always clearly labelled either.
The vast majority (68%) placed focus on potential gains – growing partnerships, promoting products, and building audiences, rather than risk explanations.
Financial creators are using the content itself to make money using affiliate links, paid promotions, courses, private communities, and ad revenue.
With unqualified advice comes partial truths, or some claims which are outright misleading. The most common partial truths the research identified were ‘passive income without effort’ and ‘side hustles that print money’ – both claims omit significant costs and risks.
Misleading advice most commonly came in two forms; “the next explosive stock”, and “guaranteed crypto returns” – both look to create a sense of urgency among viewers and neither of which can guarantee any sort of profit – a common tactic among scammers.
Christian Harris, broker analyst and editor at BrokerListings.com, said: “People are taking money advice from strangers with no credentials. Sounding confident on camera isn’t the same as knowing what you’re talking about.”
Misinformation on social media is fairly notorious – by content creators masquerading as experts still presents serious risk for viewers. The issue is so prominent that China has introduced regulations which require anyone giving professional advice online around serious topics to prove their credentials or risk losing their platform.
A particular issue with the content creator economy is the potential earnings from misinformation or misleading claims. Both Meta and TikTok were found by investigations to be risking user safety to fuel their algorithms.
These algorithms allow creators to pursue a “path that maximises profits at the expense of their audience’s wellbeing”, the study found, which illustrates the incentive for influencers to sensationalise products, ads, or financial advice and underplay the risks involved.
