SEBI makes registration mandatory for influencers
According to SEBI, any market expert must get registers with SEBI for giving financial advice to the people on social media.
In an apparent move to prevent the people from falling prey to the inexperienced advisors on social media, especially fin-fluencers, the Security and Exchange Board of India has made registration mandatory for anyone who advises the people about investments in the financial markets.
Fin-fluencers are those people who give an advice related to share market investment, property dealing, financial trade and cryptocurrency etc.
What do they do?
- Give financial advice to people
- Tips for share purchase
- Share their own experience related to personal finance
- Give information about cryptocurrency
- Advertisement of a company
According to SEBI, any market expert must get registers with SEBI for giving financial advice to the people on social media. Currently most of the fin-fluencers are not registered with SEBI. As a result SEBI doesn’t have any information if these fin-fluencers are really expert in the market.
Recently, union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that people should check all the information about any fin-fluencer before taking his/her advice.
The Advertising Standard Council of India had also released an advertising guideline for social media influencers a few months back. This guideline was related to Virtual Digital Assets like Cryptocurrency and NFT.
The ASCI had published a report earlier this week in which it was stated that 781 complaints were registered against social media influencers between April-September 2022.