There is currently no proposal to regulate financial influencers (or finfluencers), but citizens must exercise a "very strong sense of caution" against advice made by them, India's Finance Minister Nirmal Sitharamaa remarked at the Thinkers Forum held in Tumakuru on April 23. In November last year, it was reported that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which falls under the Ministry of Finance, is formulating guidelines for financial influencers to curb unsolicited financial advice on social media, especially stock tips, but from the Minister's comments, it appears that nothing of this sort is on the horizon. The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, however, in January this year released broad guidelines that apply to all types of influencers, not just financial influencers. Why does this matter: The growing number of finfluencers is a good thing when the advice they push improves financial literacy and helps people make better financial choices, but unfortunately that is not always the case. There are some finfluencers who ignorantly peddle bad financial advice due to a lack of expertise, harming those at the receiving end unintentionally. Even worse, there are a few who knowingly promote false or misleading info to make illegal gains, as we saw in the YouTube pump and dump scheme that SEBI recently cracked down on in March. "At this stage, I'm not having any proposal before me for regulating them. But yes, a word of caution is important. If there are three or four people giving us very objective, good advice, there…
