Safeguards on Non-licensed Individuals and Finfluencers who Provide Financial Advice

11 Ms He Ting Ru asked the Prime Minister and Minister for Finance in view of the developments leading to a temporary suspension of immediate fund withdrawals in March 2025 by a financial services platform (a) whether MAS is reviewing the safeguards in place to ensure that non-licensed individuals do not provide financial advice and influence the public with opinions on licensed financial institutions; and (b) whether there has been an increase in complaints against non-licensed individuals and financial influencers given this recent incident.

The Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth and Trade and Industry (Mr Alvin Tan) (for the Prime Minister): Sir, I will refer to the question by Ms He on financial influencers as "finfluencers", which was also in a question asked by the Member, Mr Melvin Yong. So, I will use that term if it is not already familiar with Members of this House.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has received eight complaints against finfluencers in 2025, with the majority attributable to comments made recently by two finfluencers who shared their reasons for liquidating their investments from an investment platform. The number of complaints in 2025 is an increase from the average of five complaints per year in the last five years and MAS is monitoring this closely.

By and large, finfluencers help create awareness of products and services offered by financial institutions and some play a role in promoting financial literacy. However, they must do so responsibly and must not veer into providing financial advice, which is a regulated activity. MAS considers an individual as providing financial advice if he is remunerated for making a recommendation or expressing an opinion on the buying, selling or holding of investment products. Even if he is not remunerated, MAS considers a finfluencer to have provided financial advice if he makes such recommendations or expressions regularly. A finfluencer providing advice must be regulated under the Financial Advisers Act and must first be appointed as a representative by a licensed financial advisory firm.

Even if finfluencers are not providing financial advice, they must not make false or misleading statements on any capital markets products, or they may be liable for an offence under the Securities and Futures Act. For example, finfluencers cannot make false or misleading statements to induce others to deal in capital market products such as shares or units in collective investment schemes. This includes any statement made on social media. Finfluencers are also subject to the principles of the Singapore Code of Advertising Practice overseen by the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS). This requires advertisements to be prepared responsibly and for statements made to be "legal, decent, honest and truthful".

MAS will continue to work with ASAS to promote good practices as well as consider the sufficiency of existing safeguards.

Mr Speaker: Ms He.

Ms He Ting Ru (Sengkang): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister of State for the reply earlier. I would just like to check with the Minister of State where he mentioned there were eight complaints received by MAS, so, whether the Minister of State can share if there is further action to be taken or if MAS is still further investigating these complaints that were made in 2025 – I assume that it is for the first quarter of this year.

The second supplementary question: I was wondering what efforts have MAS made so that finfluencers actually understand their obligations not to provide financial advice, and what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do under the existing regulations.

Mr Alvin Tan: I thank Ms He for her questions. With regard to the complaints, the Member is absolutely right. In fact, we have responded to all the complaints and there are no outstanding issues. But moving forward, if there are consumers who suspect any wrongdoing related to any advice on financial products, including finfluencers, please lodge a complaint with MAS. And MAS will review these reports of breaches and misconduct, and take the appropriate regulatory action against the relevant parties found to be in breach of MAS regulations.

On the finfluencers, can I make a plea for the finfluencers: first, to share responsibly; second, to create content with care, and that means to check that the content that you are producing or creating is both accurate and balanced; and third, to disclose relevant financial interests in these contents or the products that you are talking about.

To Ms He's point, we are keen to have a discussion with the community to learn how to collectively improve this landscape. In fact, I have already spoken to some of the finfluencers and we intend to reach out to them to have further discussions on how to improve this particular landscape, as this landscape evolves over time.