With the spectacular growth social media has witnessed in the last few years, dependency on the platform for information too has increased substantially. The tech-savvy millennials and Gen-Z turn to Instagram and YouTube for bites of knowledge, be it travel, education, fashion, politics or finance. Hence, people belonging to such fields have taken to social media to broaden their audiences and fast-track their respective careers.
An extremely popular category in this space is finance. Chartered accountants, investment bankers, stock market brokers have all adopted social media as a tool to create content and share tips and tricks with their consumers. These finance influencers or ‘finfluencers’ are an irreplaceable part of the influencer community.
Finfluencers share a lot more about personal finance than just stocks tips, taxes and saving and growing money. They discuss real life scenarios as well. Like planning a holiday, buying a car, buying or renting a house and a lot more. Finfluencers seem to have a solution for everything. Suffice to say, they leverage their extensive knowledge to make more money than ever before.
For any influencer, the largest portion of their earnings comes from brand collaborations. They can get paid anywhere between Rs. 50000 to Rs. 500000 per post. Any popular influencer does a minimum of two branded posts a month. According to experts, an influencer with 50000 to 60000 followers gets paid around 1 lakh per post. Influencers with around half a million followers charge around Rs 2 lakh for a single post. And those who have crossed 1 million followers on social media charge a minimum of Rs 5 lakh per branded post. This pay rate remains more or less the same across Instagram and YouTube. However, very popular influencers have their own pay scales.
Read More: World Startup Convention Fiasco: The greed of influencers and what everyone is missing!
Most finfluencers are experts of their domains and share good and credible information. This has made a lot of twenty year olds, who are just starting in their careers, financially sound and aware. According to Ayush Shukla, founder of talent management agency Finnet Media, “They are teaching the younger lot how to make their money grow. This in turn is making them popular amongst brands who operate in the sector.”
Attention span of consumers today has definitely reduced drastically. Where once one would read detailed articles with complex financial terms to understand a subject clearly, today all you need to do is watch your favourite finfluencer break it down and explain it in a simple and understandable manner.
Stock broking platforms, BNPL (buy now pay later) brands, banks, NBFCs, wealth management companies and mutual fund apps are increasingly and voluntarily turning to these finfluencers for marketing their products and services. Brands like Motilal Oswal, Cleartax, ICICI Bank, Uni Cards, Navi Group, PolicyBazaar, Groww, CoinSwitch Kuber and many other brands are using finfluencers for funnel campaigns.
However, it’s not all sunshine and roses. The influencer community is troubled with inauthenticity. Not all the content available is fact checked and accurate. Sometimes, if a scheme seems too good to be true, it probably is. A lot of these investment ideas that apps advertise are promoted by finfluencers who think that they’re worth looking into. However, many times influencers end up taking these schemes at face value without doing any due diligence and present it to an unassuming, young and impressionable audience.
On Sunday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman cautioned consumers against finfluencers and Ponzi schemes. She mentioned that Ponzi schemes are on a rise and every consumer should do their own research before investing their money into anything. She also mentioned how we should be wary of finfluencers too since there isn’t any proposal currently that regulates them.
The Finance Ministry is working with the Ministry of Electronics and and Information Technology and the RBI to stamp out duplicitous apps and protect consumers against financial scams.
Ponzi schemes have increased in number over the last few months. Since, a young audience easily puts their trust in finfluencers, they become more prone to financial scams. It is the duty of any influencer to make sure that they do a thorough background check before trying to sell their audience on something. Moreover, it is also a consumers responsibility to examine various investment schemes and do their verification before diving into any. After all, in Sitharaman’s words, “It is our hard-earned money. You’ve earned it. You save it. You protect it.”