Sebi plans to engage with Meta, You Tube, Telegram to crack down on finfluencers: Report | Mint

Capital markets regulator Sebi is set to engage with social media platforms such as telegram, You Tube and Meta to crack down on finfluencers. Sebi will tell them to stop sharing the content shared by unregistered financial advisors posing as finfluencers.

Incidentally, most of these platforms have reportedly agreed to comply with Sebi’s orders and will, therefore, check the authenticity of content creators, revealed sources, reported Hindu Business Line. These platforms are also working on the steps to take down the content shared by those who are not registered with the regulator, said the sources.

The regulator would, reportedly, tell the regulated entities not to do business with the platforms do not comply with regulator’s order. SEBI’s regulatory power could be used to dissuade regulated entities to associate and do business with these media platforms, the source said, Business Line wrote.

Earlier order

It is worth remembering that Sebi has passed a similar order last year when it told the regulated entities not to associate with unregistered finfluencers for any transactions, either directly or indirectly.

These include financial transaction, client’s referral, interaction of IT systems, or any other association of a similar nature.

This led to the stopping of any advertisement(s) or promotion of registered investment services or products by finfluencers, thus taking away sponsorship income of unregistered financial advisors.

These platforms tend to caution users about investment related advertisements.

For instance, according to the latest terms of service that were announced on June 26, Meta – which runs Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — has told its advertisers to verify before posting advertisements for all securities and investment-related ads on its platforms from July 31.

It is important to note that only 2 percent of influencers are registered with the Sebi, raising serious concerns about misinformation and regulatory oversight. Also, around 8 percent of investors said that they were once misled or scammed, a figure that doubles to 14 percent for those above 40.

For all personal finance stories, visit here