The saga of targeted support is set to enter a new stage. With the consultation period over, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is expected to produce a final policy statement in December.
The regulator has recently been notably keen to stress the role the initiative could play in steering investors away from the sort of “advice” readily found on social media. Nike Trost, the FCA’s head of asset management and pension policy, has spoken of how younger generations in particular are quick to seek guidance via the internet.
“When you look at investors aged 18 to 34,” Trost said, “about 45% use social media to research investments. That’s quite a lot, in my mind.” She described this as one of the areas where the FCA has “significant concerns”[1].
It is nigh on impossible to disagree. A survey of 2,000 investors found more than half lost money after following “finfluencers” – financial influencers – online, with 40% having no idea how to check the purported credentials of those whose advice they decided to take[2].
Just how dangerous is some of this alleged insight? Classic examples include tips on how an 18-year-old can turn $300 into $1,800,000 in eight years, recommendations for a first car – leasing a model worth around $100,000 is the way to go, apparently – and a heartfelt tribute to the joys of racking up debts.
Underlining Trost’s remarks, it is striking how many clips are obviously aimed at individuals in their teens or 20s. It is frightening to think what kind of disappointments and disasters some of these unwitting souls go on to experience.
Whether the finfluencers responsible are deliberately malicious or simply stupid is unclear. They may well derive pleasure from exploiting the vulnerability of others. They might be nothing more than hopelessly deluded. Both camps are probably well represented.
Regardless, the damage being done has to be considerable. It is a horrible illustration of the advice gap. The question is whether targeted support can help put an end to it.
At least at present, the consensus seems to be that the concept could be a genuine difference-maker – but not without first undergoing substantial tweaks. Key issues include whether continued monitoring of outcomes would constitute an ongoing advice relationship.
The toing and froing will no doubt persist for a while yet. In the meantime, though, perhaps we should give some thought to the bigger picture.
Unfortunately, this involves confronting a few awkward truths – the first and most unpalatable of which is that the rise of finfluencers does not reflect well on our profession. Ultimately, advice via social media is popular because it is free.
This point is easily extrapolated. The advice gap as a whole exists largely because a sizeable swathe of the public feels the services we offer are either too expensive or, slightly less damningly, fail to deliver sufficient value for money.
And so we come back to a familiar conundrum: who should lead efforts to address our industry’s shortcomings – whether real or imagined – and to transform how the adviser community is viewed? Who should be at the vanguard of attempts to raise awareness of the importance of what we do?
A layperson could be forgiven for thinking advisers themselves, along with the firms that employ them, would be at the front of the queue. Instead, not for the first time, it appears we are only too willing to leave the task to the regulator.
To a degree, of course, this is understandable. Regulators in every sphere have a vital job to perform. We might not agree with every single edict that comes down from on high, but we have a duty to comply – especially when there is reason to believe stakeholders will benefit.
Yet we are far from powerless. We are not honour-bound merely to weigh in from the sidelines if and when we are asked to do so. We can also be agents of positive change.
For instance, we implement varying levels of service so as broaden both our appeal and our client base. We can abandon the kind of rigid, unyielding, “one size fits all” mindset that deters new business. We can move away from longstanding fee structures that risk widening the advice gap rather than narrowing it.
In short: we can be the difference-makers. There is nothing to to stop us from making a collective, determined bid to help as many people as we can and, in doing so, protect our own shared future.
In some form or other, targeted support will very likely be with us soon. Fingers crossed that it works as intended. But let us not treat it is as another excuse to cling to a status quo that is increasingly showing signs of proving unsustainable.
Katie Brinsden is Managing Director of Truly Independent.
[1] See, for example, FT Adviser: “FCA: ‘Targeted support can reach people turning to social media’”, August 22 2025 – https://www.ftadviser.com/advice-guidance-boundary/2025/8/22/fca-targeted-support-can-reach-people-turning-to-social-media/.
[2] See, for example, TSB: “Over half of those who have acted on social media financial advice have lost money, TSB finds – as Bank shares consumer advice”, July 9 2025 – https://www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/over-half-of-those-who-have-acted-on-social-media-financial-advice-have-lost-money.html.
