A new study found that 74% of viral finance TikToks come from creators with no stated financial qualifications. The problem extends well beyond investing because it highlights a growing challenge for marketers operating in an economy where attention has become easier to earn than credibility.
The creator economy was built on a compelling promise. Anyone with knowledge, experience, or a unique perspective could build an audience without needing the approval of a publisher, broadcaster, or media company. That shift democratized influence, created entirely new careers, and gave brands access to authentic voices that often resonated more deeply than traditional advertising ever could.
It also created a marketplace where expertise and popularity are increasingly treated as interchangeable, even though they are not.
A new study from BrokerListings.com analyzed 150 finance-related TikTok videos with more than 100,000 views and found that 74% were produced by creators who did not state any financial qualifications. The research also found that 68% of videos minimized or ignored financial risk, 61% combined advice with affiliate marketing or product promotion, and more than half of promotional posts lacked clear disclosure despite growing regulatory scrutiny.
Those numbers should concern more than financial institutions because they expose a much larger issue that marketers across nearly every category are beginning to confront.
Social media has become exceptionally good at identifying content that keeps people watching, although it remains remarkably poor at identifying content that deserves to be trusted. Algorithms reward confidence, entertainment, consistency, and engagement because those signals drive usage, while expertise often remains invisible unless audiences actively seek it out. As a result, creators who speak authoritatively can accumulate enormous influence regardless of whether they possess meaningful qualifications.
That distinction matters because influence has increasingly become a substitute for credibility.
Brands now rely on creators to explain everything from artificial intelligence and cybersecurity to nutrition, healthcare, automotive technology, investing, parenting, and personal finance. Consumers frequently encounter those creators in environments where educational content, personal opinion, sponsored endorsements, and product recommendations appear almost indistinguishable from one another, making it increasingly difficult to recognize where expertise ends and persuasion begins.
Finance simply makes the problem easier to see because the consequences can be immediate.
Poor investment advice can cost consumers money, although the underlying dynamic extends into virtually every category where purchasing decisions depend upon trust. A skincare recommendation from someone with no dermatological knowledge, a health supplement promoted without scientific evidence, or an artificial intelligence expert whose expertise consists primarily of producing viral videos all illustrate the same challenge. Consumers often assume authority because platforms have conditioned them to associate visibility with legitimacy.
That assumption creates significant risk for marketers.
Every creator partnership represents a transfer of trust because brands borrow the creator’s relationship with an audience while creators simultaneously borrow the credibility of the brand. When those relationships are built on genuine expertise, transparency, and thoughtful communication, both parties become more valuable. When they are built primarily on reach and engagement, however, brands inherit every credibility problem the creator brings with them.
Regulators have begun paying closer attention because financial misinformation has become increasingly difficult to distinguish from legitimate education. Both the SEC and FINRA have warned consumers about relying on unqualified financial influencers while reminding investors that confidence on camera should never replace professional expertise. Those warnings may be directed at investing, although the broader lesson applies to every industry that has embraced creator marketing as a core communications strategy.
None of this suggests that formal credentials should become the only measure of credibility because expertise can be acquired in many different ways. Some creators spend years researching their subjects, documenting real-world experience, interviewing respected experts, and carefully disclosing the limits of their knowledge, while some credentialed professionals struggle to communicate effectively enough to educate anyone. Credentials alone do not create trust, although the complete absence of expertise should probably raise more questions than today’s social platforms encourage audiences to ask.
Credentials alone do not create trust, although the complete absence of expertise should probably raise more questions than today’s social platforms encourage audiences to ask.
The more important question for marketers is whether existing influencer strategies have kept pace with the maturity of the creator economy.
For years, brands evaluated creators primarily through audience size, engagement rates, demographic fit, production quality, and campaign performance because those metrics were relatively easy to measure. The next generation of creator marketing will likely require companies to evaluate credibility with the same seriousness they evaluate brand safety, fraud prevention, disclosure compliance, and media quality because the long-term value of influence increasingly depends upon whether audiences believe the person speaking actually knows what they are talking about.
That shift may become even more important as artificial intelligence dramatically lowers the cost of producing convincing content.
When anyone can generate professional-looking videos, realistic voices, polished graphics, and authoritative scripts in minutes, visual quality becomes a weaker signal of expertise than it has ever been before. Consumers will inevitably look elsewhere for reasons to trust what they see, making transparency, demonstrated knowledge, consistency, and accountability far more valuable than production quality alone.
Christian Harris, Broker Analyst and Editor at BrokerListings.com, summarized the issue clearly when he said, “People are taking money advice from strangers with no credentials. Sounding confident on camera isn’t the same as knowing what you’re talking about.”
That observation may have been made about finance, although it describes a challenge facing the entire creator economy because attention has never been easier to manufacture while credibility has never been more difficult to verify. The brands that recognize the difference will be better positioned than those that continue confusing influence with expertise, particularly as consumers become more skeptical about who deserves their trust in the first place.