Should you trust finfluencers? A New Zealand guide

Trusting social media influencers with your money is a bad idea. A financial influencer, or finfluencer (someone who posts about money and investing on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or a podcast), is usually unqualified and often based in another country. They are paid by someone other than you, and answerable to nobody if their tip costs you. The content ranges from budgeting tips, which can be helpful, to recommendations about specific investments, which in New Zealand require a licence the creator almost never holds. The safe rule is to treat all of it as entertainment, and to let none of it decide what you buy, sell, switch or borrow.

The problem is wider than dishonesty. Accurate information can still produce the wrong decision when it ignores your tax position, your debts, your other investments, your family and how long your money has to last. We see this in advisory work. People arrive with a portfolio built from a feed, chosen without reference to their goals, their other assets or their stage of life. Many have followed rules written for an American audience, because most finance content is made offshore and the tax rules, products and retirement system it describes are not ours. The content they followed was usually honest and general, and general advice applied to one household's circumstances creates problems which are expensive to unwind. At the far end, a few believe they own investments which do not exist, because the account they trusted was a scam.

What a finfluencer is

The label covers anyone using social media to share opinions, tips or commentary about money. At one end are a small number of qualified professionals building an audience. At the other are anonymous accounts promoting cryptocurrency for a commission. The format varies by platform, and on TikTok the corner of the app devoted to it is sometimes called FinTok.

How finfluencers make money

Making the content is cheap. A phone and an editing app cover most of it, and the lifestyle in the background can be hired by the day. The money is in what the content sells, usually through one or more of these:

• Affiliate commissions. A fee, sometimes $50 or more, when a follower signs up to an investment app, trading platform or financial product through the creator's link.
• Sponsored content. Product providers pay for posts, videos or mentions. The Advertising Standards Authority's guidance on identifying advertisements requires the payment to be disclosed.
• Paid courses and memberships. Programmes on trading, property or cryptocurrency, sometimes priced above a session with a licensed adviser.
• Platform advertising revenue. YouTube and TikTok pay for views, so a bold claim earns more than a careful one.

A creator earning a commission for each app sign-up and a creator describing what worked for them make the same video, and you cannot tell them apart by watching.

Why a stranger on your phone feels trustworthy

Familiarity is the main reason. A creator who appears on your phone every day for a year feels known, the way a colleague feels known, and viewers extend the trust they would give a colleague. The creators look and sound like their audience. They show the result, a car or a beach or a screenshot of a balance, and skip the process. And the platform chooses which of them you see. It shows you the creators people watch longest, which favours confidence, frequency and simple answers over caution and detail.

A large academic study of 29,000 people posting share tips on one platform found the poor performers were the most active and attracted the biggest followings. Following them would have lost money against the market. The skilled minority posted less and was harder to find. On that platform, the most-followed posters were the worst performers.

The people most exposed to this are young. A 2022 survey found social media was the leading source of investment advice for New Zealanders under 25, used by 44 percent, against 3 percent of baby boomers. The same year, an FMA-commissioned survey found only around one in ten 18 to 24 year olds trusted TikTok or Instagram for financial information. Young people are using what they say they distrust. A Canadian regulator's survey found the same pattern, with 35 percent of retail investors having acted on a finfluencer's advice while most said they distrusted finfluencers as a group.

The core risks of following finfluencer content

No qualifications or accountability

One analysis of about 1,800 finance videos across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook found only about 2 percent of the creators held a relevant financial qualification. Nobody would take medical advice from an untrained stranger with a large audience, or legal advice, or have their house rewired on the strength of a video. With money, the same caution is often missing.

A finfluencer almost certainly carries no obligation to act in your interest, no professional indemnity insurance and no complaints process. If you lose money on their recommendation there is nobody to hold responsible. A licensed adviser in New Zealand works under a code of conduct, belongs to a dispute resolution scheme and answers to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA).

Conflicts of interest you cannot see

Even where sponsorships are disclosed, the audience rarely sees how much is at stake. Affiliate deals, referral bonuses and course sales can pay a creator far more than their own investing does, so the incentive is to keep you watching. The course is the part which fails a basic logic test. Joseph Darby, chief executive of Become Wealth, puts it this way:

"Many influencers try and sell their system to achieve amazing investment returns. But if someone had a reliable method for beating any investment market, they would be running a hedge fund and managing billions in investor funds, and being incredibly well-rewarded for it. They would not be selling the method for a relative pittance to strangers on TikTok."

For the influencer, a trading course produces income whether or not the method works for the buyer. Any claim of repeatable market-beating returns would need a complete, independently verified record showing the losses, fees and tax as well as the wins, and a screenshot is none of those things. Even a complete record would only show what one person did with one amount of money. It would say nothing about whether you, and every other buyer of the course, could repeat it at the same time.

The parts of your finances they leave out

Finfluencer content clusters around the exciting parts of money: cryptocurrency, options, buying property to resell quickly, passive income and picking the next big share. The unexciting parts barely feature, and they decide how most people's finances turn out. Income and life insurance. Diversification. An emergency fund. Which debt to clear first. Tax on different types of investment. A will and enduring powers of attorney. What to do with a KiwiSaver balance as retirement gets closer. None of it makes a good 60-second video.

The result is a lopsided education. Followers can explain a leveraged ETF and have no income protection, or hold six cryptocurrencies and no will. The exciting content is also the riskiest, because it deals in products where large, fast losses are possible.

Made for somewhere else

Most of the finance content a New Zealander sees was made in the United States. It assumes American tax rules, American retirement accounts, American products and an American market, and a creator can be honest, qualified and right for their own country while being wrong for you. Take a routine piece of American advice: sell shares which have fallen, record the loss, and use it to reduce the tax on your gains. In the United States it works, because gains are taxed there. In New Zealand there is no general capital gains tax, so a long-term investor who copies the move has turned a paper loss into a cash loss and gained nothing on tax. At worst, Inland Revenue might define a pattern of buying and selling like this as trading, and a trader's gains are taxed. An honest, competent creator has cost the New Zealand viewer money. The same mismatch runs through retirement accounts, which have no equivalent here, the tax on overseas shares, the rules around KiwiSaver withdrawals and the way managed funds are taxed. It is the most common problem we find in people who have acted on online content.

What New Zealand law says, and how little it does in practice

New Zealand draws a line between general information, which anyone may publish, and regulated financial advice, which needs a licence. The FMA's guide for people talking about money online, updated in February 2026, gives examples of the second kind: recommending a specific product, telling followers to switch KiwiSaver provider or fund, giving price targets, or inviting people to copy another person's trades. For giving regulated advice to the public without a licence, the FMA says an individual can face a penalty of up to $200,000. Misleading claims about returns may separately breach fair dealing rules in financial markets law or the Fair Trading Act. The Fair Trading Act carries fines of up to $200,000 for an individual, and a bill before Parliament would raise them. Financial advisers appear on the Financial Service Providers Register, linked to the licensed advice provider they work under.

The protections exist and, so far, have been lightly used. No finfluencer has been prosecuted in New Zealand. In April 2026 the FMA took its firmest step so far, joining 16 other regulators in a global week of action: it contacted 14 creators, had misleading content removed, and reported some had stopped offering services here. Most of the content, the FMA told Newsroom, involved copy trading. In Australia, by comparison, the regulator has taken a finfluencer to court: Gabriel Govinda was convicted of manipulating 20 listed shares and promoting them online, sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment, and released immediately on a good-behaviour bond. Regulation here reacts after the content has been seen, and the main tool to date is a letter. Until the record changes, the protection is your own scepticism.

Where to find trustworthy financial information in New Zealand

Ignoring finfluencers costs you nothing, because each kind of question already has an accountable source, and most of them are free:

• Sorted, run by the Retirement Commission, covers budgeting, how KiwiSaver works, debt and retirement. Its Smart Investor tool compares KiwiSaver schemes and managed funds on fees, returns and investment mix, using the documents providers are legally required to file.
• The FMA publishes plain guides on investing and on staying safe with online money advice.
• Inland Revenue answers most tax questions in plain language on its website.
• Written sources by named authors with a track record, if you want to teach yourself to invest.
• A licensed financial adviser, for anything which depends on your own circumstances. An adviser builds the answer around your income, your debt, your goals and your risk, carries a legal duty to put your interests first, and belongs to a complaints scheme if something goes wrong. Advisers vary in cost, specialism and ownership.

Making this practical

Keep social media for the things it is good at: holidays, hobbies, recipes and a laugh. When a post makes you want to buy, sell, switch or borrow, take the question to someone accountable for the answer.

If most of what you know about money has come from a feed, the useful next step is the part the feed left out. A complimentary initial consultation with a Become Wealth adviser starts from your own income, goals and timeframe. It covers insurance, diversification, debt and where your KiwiSaver savings sit, so the whole picture is built for you rather than for an audience.

Frequently asked questions

Can a finfluencer legally talk about KiwiSaver?

General information about how KiwiSaver works is fine. Recommending a specific scheme or telling followers to switch provider or fund is regulated financial advice, which requires a licence.

How do I report a finfluencer giving unlicensed advice?

Through the FMA's online contact form. Misleading claims about returns can also be reported to the Commerce Commission.

Are finfluencers required to disclose sponsorships in New Zealand?

Yes, under the Advertising Standards Authority's guidance on identifying advertisements. A disclosure tells you who is paying and nothing about whether the claim is accurate.