'Finfluencers should not mislead public'

India's markets regulator is faced with a Catch-22 situation as it rachets up efforts to increase the country's financial awareness

- Sashind Ningthoukhongjam & Priyanka Gawande

"There is a dilemma on how to spread financial awareness across the system and at the same time ensuring that finfluencers' don't spread misleading advice for earning extra income," said G. Ananth Narayan, whole time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) at Mint's 9th annual mutual fund conclave on Thursday.

Finfluencers are entities that are capable of influencing people financially via various social media platforms.

"We need to let educators do their job and on the other hand ensure quality of education is good," said Narayan, while urging the 44-trillion MF industry to explore new types of products to ensure sustained growth in assets under management.

"This is an area which is going to require a lot of discussion on how to ensure quality financial education and at the same time ensuring that wrong doers do not spread pervasive incentives and destroy the trust in the system," said Narayan.

This comes at a time when the industry is expecting the market regulator to come out with a consultation paper regarding how the regulator plans to curb mis-selling by so-called finfluencers. To be sure, Sebi chairperson, Madhabi Puri Buch, in a recent board meeting said the markets regulator is currently working on a consultation paper covering this subject.