Originally appeared in
Finfluencers offer ‘reviews’ when investors need impartial advice
Published in The Sunday Times on November 11, 2026.
I often marvel at the normalisation of things which heretofore appeared unlikely.
The proliferation of financial influencers or finfluencers is my latest fascination. While some finfluencers have the qualification required to become a fully fledged financial adviser, many don’t.
Even more concerning is the fact that, in Ireland anyway, no finfluencer is regulated. This is circumvented by framing their content as education rather than advice, when of course we all know that the effect is the same. One website even proclaims that it allows you to move from “education to execution in a single click”. A statement which would make a financial adviser blush.
I’ve written previously about the effect that the payment of commission can have on financial advice. The most common remuneration structure used by financial advisers in Ireland, payment of commission in return for product sales, has its flaws. It’s not black and white though, you could be an excellent ethical and morally sound adviser and be paid via commissions. You could also be the opposite. The problem with this is that some people in this situation will invariably behave badly. It was always thus; men love darkness because their deeds are evil, and all that.
To counter this, all regulated financial advisers are required, among many other things, to have a section on their website which discloses all the remuneration structures they have access to from each product provider, and they are required to disclose all commissions which will be earned in advance of arranging a product for you.
An interesting aspect of the finfluencer industry is how they get paid. Much of the content they put out conveys that their motivation is to rid the world of bad financial advice, bridge the gap in financial education and so on. You could be forgiven for thinking that you’re dealing with a charity.
Finfluencers often have a number of income streams. They can earn money from selling e-books or financial education classes or from subscriptions to premium content. They can earn ad revenue from a platform like YouTube and, if really successful they might even earn from book sales or media appearances. They can also be paid to promote something directly like a particular investment, although if they want to maintain their current regulation-free existence this is an activity they would do well to avoid. By far their most lucrative source of income however, is the payments they receive from partners for convincing clients, sorry users, to sign up to a product or platform they have “reviewed”.
I have often found that people who are trying to convince me of something with which I am unlikely to agree, are exposed by their use of new words not normal in the context of the subject under discussion. With this in mind I note the use of ‘influencer’ in the place of ‘adviser’, ‘education’ in place of ‘advice’, ‘user’ in the place of ‘client’ and ‘reviewed’ in place of ‘recommended’.
I recently reviewed the website of a well-known finfluencer which stated that they only work with partners who are regulated and that as well as reviewing the products for partners who pay them for sign-ups, they also review the products of providers who they aren’t partnered with, thus keeping them impartial. It also states that these payments will never affect their impartiality even though, which of the partners pay for sign-ups, or how much they pay is not disclosed.
Even taken at its highest point I’m not sure how any of this guarantees impartiality. It seems to me that the model results in a very slightly different version of precisely the same conflict of interest that the financial advice industry as a whole suffers from, except without any oversight whatsoever, or any requirement for disclosure.
We are all about choice however, and the finfluencer movement has added another option. You had the choice of a fee-only adviser, a fee-based adviser who could accept a fee and/or a commission, or a broker. You can now add a finfluencer who gets paid by the providers of the product he or she reviews to the list.
It reminds me of a much quoted scene from the film ‘The Life of Brian’ which I will now paraphrase for my own entertainment. Apart from the adviser qualification requirements, factfinding, objective setting, cashflow modelling, financial education and coaching, assessment of your attitude to risk, capacity for loss and risk tolerance, product advice and set up, regulatory oversight, disclosure requirements, two different investor compensation schemes and, if all else fails, recourse to the Ombudsman, I ask you, what did the financial advice industry ever do for us?
Eoghan Gavigan is a Certified Financial Planner and the owner of Highfield Financial Planning hfp.ie
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