Why Sharan Hegde’s financial advisory business is a test for Sebi's rules regulating ads by advisers and finfluencers

livemint.com:

Management consultant Sharan Hegde was just 25 in July 2021 when Mint first wrote about the rise of financial influencers, or ‘finfluencers’ as they've come to be known. Working with PwC in Bengaluru at the time, he had around 105,000 followers on Instagram and was already earning more from paid social media promotions on ‘financewithsharan’ than his monthly salary.

Cut to July 2024 and Hegde is among India’s most-followed financial influencers, with about six million followers across various social media channels. He now brings in around ₹60 crore in annual revenue, of which about 85% comes from selling courses through his ‘One Percent Club’.

Hegde has also started a registered investment advisory (RIA) business, which raises more questions than it answers.

Should social media influencers be dispensing financial advice through RIA entities of their own? And what does this mean for the Securities and Exchange Board of India's advertising code for RIAs?

Finfluencers have traditionally been funded by brokers and other financial services firms in return for promotions. But not all of these ‘collaborations’ were transparently disclosed to the public.

Hegde had been pulled up by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) for an Instagram post promoting Cred (Dreamplug Technologies) without adequate disclosure that it was an advertisement.

Another challenge that finfluencers posed for Sebi's rules was their unregistered status. While dispensing financial advice in exchange for money is prohibited for entities not registered with Sebi, the dispensation of financial advice for free (through advertisements and social media posts) falls in a grey area.

Moreover, as the number of finfluencers dispensing unregistered