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Bad advice on social media

Journalist: Hereward Mills, FT Adviser

ended 11. August 2026

This article on people losing money after acting on financial advice on social media has gained traction on LinkedIn. 

According to TSB, 56 per cent of adults who acted on financial advice on social media lost money, with an average loss of £690.46. 

Advisers, 

  • Have you experienced clients who have lost money after acting on financial advice on social media? 
  • Do clients come to you with financial misconceptions derived from social media?
  • What more should social media companies, regulators or the financial services industry be doing to prevent consumers losing money through financial content on social media? 

Very keen to hear your answers, as well as thoughts on financial advice on social media in general. 

Best, 

Hereward 

7 responses from the Newspage community

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Mike Staton
Director at Staton Mortgages
This comes as no suprose to me. Social media is a hot-bed for self proclaimed Gurus, Pyramid Schemes and get rich quick incentives. The most recent FAD is the trading of digitalised tokens being masqueraded as Gold Trading. Unqualified and unregulated people are claiming to be advisors, picking off the Naive and desperate. Its about time social media was regulated in a way that these sort of schemes can not be advertised without the Advisor being licensed and regulated. Whilst there are people losing money, there are certainly people making a killing too.

The government need to accept responsibility too, as individuals are becoming increasingly deperate to make ends meet, they are resorting to get rich quick schemes on social media with little protection. If the UK was an affordable and fair place to live, people wouldnt be doing this.
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Craig Fish
Director at Lodestone Mortgages
The biggest issue is misleading advice on what to do and what not to do. Someone buys one house and suddenly they're an expert, telling thousands of followers how mortgages work based on their single experience. Then you get the breaking news style videos, rates have dropped, when in reality that rate might never applied to most borrowers in the first place. A regulated adviser is accountable for what they say and answers to the FCA. Someone with a ring light and an opinion answers to nobody. Regulation needs to catch up with this fast, because right now anyone can call themselves a mortgage expert online and there are no consequences when they get it wrong, only for the person who followed their advice.
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Ben Perks
Managing Director at Orchard Financial Advisers
This is a thorn in the side of our industry. Qualified advisers are regulated within an inch of their life and many are cautious about what they say on social media. But there are so many unqualified and unscrupulous people that say whatever they like with no repercussions at all. They need regulating and fining like any IFA; if an individual is advising, they should be fearful of sanctions and ultimately, jail time.
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Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
Am I a financial adviser? No. Do I see the wreckage at work? Constantly. Here is the employee angle everyone misses. When someone loses £690 to a TikTok "hack," they do not leave it at the door. It walks into work as stress, sick days and a head that is anywhere but the job. Money worries are one of the biggest drains on focus I see, and social media is pouring petrol on it. I have watched people opt out of a solid workplace pension because someone with a ring light and no qualifications told them it was a con. Turning down free employer money on the say-so of a stranger. That one stings. The fix is not just regulators playing whack-a-mole with dodgy posts. Employers have a part in this too. Signpost proper, regulated advice. Talk about money openly at work. Do not let an algorithm be your team's pension adviser. The advice was free. The £690 lesson was not.
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Tony Redondo
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
The damage is real from social media awash with self-styled trading gurus flogging high-leverage FX bets and push-button algorithms. Clients come to us after trying to time volatile markets on social hype, only to get hammered by margin calls and automated selloffs, because these apps treat currency markets like a game: reactive, one-size-fits-all, blind to macro reality, geopolitical shifts and individual risk. The biggest misconception is that a slick app replaces real expertise. A standardised platform treats a £100,000 corporate exposure like a £50 punt, with none of the human judgement complex risk demands. Regulators need to clamp down on unvetted finfluencers, social platforms must restrict unverified financial advice, and our industry has to champion proactive, relationship-led guidance over self-service apps built to maximise trade volume at the client's expense.
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Harvey Dhillon
Founder & CEO at Zmartly
Yes, though my lane is tax, not investments: I am a chartered management accountant, not a financial adviser. The ones who reach me have usually acted on a viral tip and already filed it. The money is gone. In tax, the bill lands on the person who followed the tip, rarely on the person who posted it. Clients bring me misconceptions weekly. That the £1,000 trading allowance hides a side hustle. The £1,000 is gross income, not profit. Go over it and, if you are not already in Self Assessment, you must register by 5 October after the tax year. That you can put the car through the company, which usually means a taxable benefit or a loan to repay. None of it is fixed by saying you saw it online. On late filing and late payment, relying on someone else is not a reasonable excuse unless you took reasonable care. Regulators cannot chase every post. Platforms can. They already check who may buy a financial ad. Apply it to the free content that earns them the same money.
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Scott Taylor-Barr
Principal Adviser at Barnsdale Financial Management
Whilst there is obviously some genuine bad actors looking to defraud people on social media, I feel that most of the issues come from people who are thinking they are being helpful; be that "finfluencers" or members of the general public commenting on people posts. This leads to people reading posts that are discussing American or Australian financial products or issues, not realising this wouldn't apply to the UK market, or they are viewing content that is out-of-date - be that because it was current when posted or sometimes because the creator has posted it not knowing that the issue they are highlighting has already changed, as they are simply not close enough to the sharp end of the market to realise. The safest thing to do is check that any social media guidance is coming from a UK registered firm or individual; check their website or ensure they are on the FCA register, or check to see if the post or their social media profile contains the statutory warnings you'd expect.