The Rise of the Financial Influencer

[Music] all right everybody thank you so much for being here for what will be my favorite subject of the day because this is fascinating I did not know that iosco was launching a consultation into the fin fluenc but I have no idea what the exact definition of a influencer should be so please bring me up to speed uh s would you give me your definition of a influencer please sure thank you Simon so let me ask you this let's say that you are at your house sitting on your couch and you heard about Nvidia incredible Rally or Bitcoin search so the first thing you're going to do is basically let me think about investing in those yeah so you have two scenarios here the first one if you have experience in the financial Market you're going to go to those tools like Bloomberg for example check about the stock check their fundamentals and maybe reading some Financial reports but honestly the majority are not like this so a lot of people will have the instinct to go and open their Instagram YouTube Tik Tok searching for insights why is that because it's more simple and accessible so here is the question whom you going to trust in giving you that guidance is it a Creator who just care about the clickbait content or someone who has an experience he did it he tried he failed and then he gave you the lesson learned that's why for me as influencer it's not only about influencing it's more about empowering people to take some of their most important decisions in life which means your are raising awareness about how to invest wisely how to manage your money and how to mitigate the risk and that doesn't really only require influencing because again I'm not influencing people to go and try a certain dish or maybe buying a certain Gadget so I think a influencer requires subject matter experts in the field thought leader in the fields that would really understand the responsibility that comes with the trust let's hope that influencers do understand their responsibility and it probably shouldn't surprise us that given most people get their news from influencers and social media that they're also getting their financial education from the same place but with great influence does come great responsibility shout out to Spider-Man so what does this content actually look like Henry when we are uh putting this together and we're consuming it uh who's the audience and and what are they actually receiving what does one of these videos really look like sure I mean first of all super excited to be here to share our passion of creating content with you all uh I think everybody every content creator we have a different uh content we create in my case it's been very clear I've been creating content daily now since 2016 uh and I don't see myself I hate the term content creator I hate the term k we're Educators I'm actually also a university Professor I run a hedge fund do my day job uh you know but I'm my my for over 10 years I've been a professor University and our job is educating uh people in a in a in a honest and fast and concise way to give you an idea right now I have over half a million followers on LinkedIn for example I have 60,000 followers on my newsletter and uh I have now a TV show on CNBC and all these things led to that what I found over the years is that the most difficult is delivering the content an easy to digestible way to give you an idea my show that I have is the crypto capsule it's a 60c show on everything happens in digital assets globally in 60 seconds that 60 seconds cont cont takes me anywhere from 5 to 6 hours a week to create and that is a big decision to make what you put in what you do there and it's it's a creating for the for the ecosystem I'm a firm believer that the future of f FL influencer or content creator uh is going to be people who are educating but in a fast way and building the community for example my newsletter that goes out the open rate is 33% which is extremely high for anybody in the marketing field and because you have a community people care about it that's what people want to get on that of course it comes with responsibility uh and that's why it's quite difficult I'm very happy to see the rules around it uh but I really believe this is the future of uh marketing content sales is by content creators you can have even a 100% Community or a million people community a community that cares about you on any topic will go there and as long as you're giving value that actually have you have product yeah it it's funny how content creators have become really good at taking very complex things and simplifying them but are they doing it responsi and it takes a lot of effort to make things look so effortless I think that's that's the hard thing people tend to view it as a very uh simple thing um and FIS I know this is something uh you've been quite conscious about with what you do at Baraka but I'm interested how would you integrate this work with content creators into buying Financial assets and what's the role of you as a platform in all of that well first of all thank you it's great to be here it's great to be s founded by Financial thought leaders because I think of you as as Financial thought leaders all of you have your own mediums um and so we've we've cross paths in uh in multiple forms uh as as I started building Baka and um uh you know this is the future of Education uh like Henry was saying and so if we can uh work with financial thought leaders in providing uh uh education that then enables uh good Investments or long-term investing that's kind of what we look for we look we look to work with the right Financial thought leaders that can then um basically positively contribute to uh to people's uh investment knowledge and I think there's a big there's a big difference between trying to build long-term wealth and so building the right kind of education around long-term wealth building versus sort of short-term trading and I think that there also the scale of the kind of the financial thought leaders uh is very different from that perspective it kind of well unfortunately we did see in 2021 of course there was the meme stock craze and there was um a lot of crypto pump and dump scams and of course not all digital assets are created equal but neither are all digital asset influencers neither are all financial services influencers and and bifa that is is really really hard so m i I want to um ask you quickly and Henry so you had a point as well what what goes wrong what happens when something goes wrong like play that out to me and show me the consequences of not taking that responsibility seriously interesting so if the Creator didn't really take that responsible content definitely a lot of things might go wrong as we said the scams the fraud and so forth but the question here what if we don't do what we are doing which means a financial lcy isn't democratized yes we are risking millions of people that might be at the risk of their poor or bad financial decisions so we really need those credible voices stepping into the space because as you mentioned not necessarily the most loud Creator is the most ethical and this is very important and we are seeing what is going on right now and by the way the meme stocks the crypto they are back so this is I think this is the time people really should be really cautious about where to put their money but let me share with you something uh personal and this is coming back to one of my discussions with faras here so I received several offers to push a high leverage cfds to my followers and by the way those offers by hundreds of thousands of Dirhams wow we know that leveraged cfds comes with really shiny rewards and you know that but again it carries significant risks so for me trust is my currency with my followers so the thing that if the Creator prioritize profit over the trust here we can see or I I believe that our audience will really pay the price which is most probably a devastated Financial losses it it is sort of the trust thing is your real currency as a Creator isn't it Henry but you can monetize it and it could be extremely lucrative as as s says you you were about to jump in a moment ago and I also want to get your thoughts on um the Gap in financial literacy that was pointed out here by Samar as well I know in the UK something like less than 30% of people can know what APR is and less than 5% can actually explain it and yet that's how we how we advertised every lending product so so expand on those thoughts it's a big big topic right how we actually educate and how we share so Al first of all depends on the platform so I made a very strong decision 10 years ago to focus on LinkedIn at a Time videos were just starting on LinkedIn my view is when you're at the office and you have your Instagram your Tik Tok it didn't exist at the time people tell you what are you doing but LinkedIn is accepted so that was actually a strategic decision so my audience is very professional audience recently I just launched a book a kids book called decoding crypto again became bestseller top five new releases globally for kids book this year it's educating kids on digital assets but that book took three years of work we interviewed over 200 teachers cuz how you make sure you educate kids and you don't want them to go pun Dogecoin and stuff like that so it's actually quite difficult to do uh but the other big thing as well comes in is scammers and stuff I mean it's very interesting every week every week I get approached by a crypto project a company they're like hey Henry do you want to pump this token do you want to do this and we'll give you share of the revenue and for me the fact that this is happening in writing on Twitter on LinkedIn shows you how uh obvious this is and I think it's a massive problem and I think what we should do I think as content creators we a responsibility to speak out against these firms but also Frank a lot of the marketing firms in the in the market as well who actually encourage these firms and actually entrepreneurs as well who are supporting these things right I think that's what we have a duty on doing this but at the end of the day it's a Content as people decide if you're not happy and we have to compete as well right so when you're creating educational content we are competing against somebody doing funny videos somebody at a beach doing stupidities you know so it's very even more difficult to create educational content on platforms where people often want to go when they're relaxing so very very interesting how this is going to evolve it's uh it's quite interesting to to hear that I mean there there there are a lot of scammers and there there is a lot of uh bad content out there but then you know you look at the flip side of that there is a lot of good content out there and then there's some questionable content and how do you look at this questionable content like the story of roaring Kitty who knows the story of roaring Kitty here you know that that's the uh the um the content creator that created the whole GameStop uh content that has a million subscribers on YouTube that's basically educating a whole generation of people about uh investing in derivatives you know and he's teaching you know teenagers and people in their early 20s about you know topics like a short squeeze and he's driving markets now that's not necessarily a great thing but is it is it a bad thing that you have hundreds of thousands millions of people that are learning complex Financial products talking about it you know being interested in it that's not necessarily a bad thing to me you know but these folks are able to distribute quite freely through uh social media platforms Tech platforms forms and everything else I mean I I want to ask all three of you this I I'll start with Henry what is the role of these Tech platforms if any in moderating should they be moderating providing guidance providing watermarks providing something or is that more with the Creator where do you see that balance uh first of all I think there's two sides of of that debate I think as content creator we have responsibility and there's good that there's actually just some moderation but also by the way goes the other way around as well uh for example there are certain topics that as a content creator if you mention it you'll get banned you know the the interesting thing for me imagine all these years I I create content let's say on LinkedIn tomorrow LinkedIn doesn't like me they cut cut me out Twitter if they could censor a former US president regardless of your political views it can happen to any one of us right I that's one of the things we're having there's a lot of control I'll give you an example for ex if on bitcoin crypto on LinkedIn they're they're they're very negative ironically I can go punt a push a CFT with 20x Leverage is no problem so it's very arbitrary and often is done by actually uh automated tools and let's not even talk about political views especially in the region some of the recent event that took place in the region if you mention one of those as a content creator you immediately be cancered out of the platform and there's no even appeal so these are top topics as even content creators we want to talk about everybody's worried everybody self censors it and this is why I'm a big advocate of web tree as it comes I should be able to own my content as a viewer you should be paid for the time you spend making a choice to watch our content I I I think my our kids are going to look back and say wow W I can't believe Google and F meta were making money when we were making a choice to watch this and this is all going to change as web Tre comes in and decentralized platforms come in Ferris any thoughts on the role of the platforms look I think everybody has a responsibility to produce content that that is uh fair and accurate not misleading uh that also The Regulators have a role in kind of moderating that content and making sure that uh that platforms you know behave accordingly um you know it'll be interesting like Henry says if content content starts to become more decentralized as web 3 comes in platforms as platforms sorry but but you know content is plentyful and it's there there's lots out there and you can find pretty much anything that you want um how we moderate it is is it's just like anything else it's very hard we know deplatforming doesn't always work and so there are consequences there too and uh it is we're in a crazy crazy phase of that Su I I want to get your thoughts and you Ferris did mention the RW regulation what can Regulators do what should governments do because I think those are two different questions true so very interesting questions because basically again it highlights first of all the responsibility for the Creator to differentiate you need to differentiate between three things here when it comes to advising we don't do advice I don't like personally what we do on the content is educational we are not really giving Financial advice to people to go and try things it's basically guiding and this is the difference here so I have a lot of followers and messages keep asking me about share with us your swing trades a lot of people are here and they know that we really nailed it this year when it comes to the swing trades however the purpose basically is to guide them and show them the possibility it was not for them to go and copy a trade why because let's say that someone copied my swing trade and he got like 10 to 15 return he will be happy but what about if he lose 30 to 50% he will be outreached yeah why because it's a financial loss and he didn't understand the risk so that's why I make sure that whenever we create any content we really differentiate that this is only for educational purpose it's to God you through certain tools and certain steps so you can really do it by yourself um so yeah it's a difficult tension because it feels like the audience wants you to give them the answer and you feel like you have to give them the path to the answer and the people who give them the answer get more attention because we are in a low attention span theater so Henry talk to me about how you condense that into 60 seconds and still build trust with that audience and stand out in an attention economy where there are people trying anything to get attention because it's lucrative it's extremely difficult but I think there's I think the the time it takes to create that content to make it valuable you always need to respect your audience for example a panel like this today you're spending 20 minutes of your life listening to this panel if we didn't deliver you value we failed we literally wasted 20 minutes of your life right same thing with content creation if we create a minute of content our job is to really make sure that's why I'm saying that one minute of content takes me 5 to 6 hours in the back end often you don't realize it but that's what it is and second thing is what you're passionate about I highly encourage everyone when I started creating content used to cost me $5,000 to hire a crew cameras this and that now it's literally you take your phone you can do it and honestly some platforms like Tik Tok it's so easy it's not even funny every one of you you are each one of you you are passionate about something it could be coffee making it be lighting it could be music it can be microphones and for that audience there is a passionate audience that cares about that and that wants to listen to you that's why I highly encourage everybody to create content this is the future the Hollywood of the future is content creators and actually this is why I think the UAE is becoming the help for that share your share your passion final word yeah if if I just uh I need to add a point regarding the regulation so there is two side here when you mentioned about the governmental and then when it comes to the ecosystem so I believe there should be a clear collaboration between the creators the platforms as well as the regulator to come out with with a clear regulation because that Clarity why does it matter because basically it will protect the audience yet it will give the freedom to the creators to feel to be creative and talk about certain subjects without crossing the line of ethical borders I love that don't hate collaborate make it lucrative for everybody involved uh ladies and Gentlemen please thank my wonderful panel thank you very much thank you so much [Music] what