Seventeen financial regulators worldwide, including the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), took part in a week of action against finfluencers who engage in illegal financial promotion.
The week of action included enforcement activity, consumer awareness campaigns and educational programmes for finfluencers who want to act responsibly.
Finfluencers are social media personalities who use their platform to promote financial products and share insights and advice with their followers.
In the UK, the FCA secured a guilty plea from retired mixed-martial artist and reality TV star Aaron Chalmers for illegal promotions on social media and has commenced criminal proceedings against two other individuals for similar offences.
It also sent four targeted warning letters to individuals suspected of engaging in unauthorised financial promotions, issued 34 warning alerts against unauthorised firms or individuals, and made 120 account takedown requests to social media platforms hosting illegal finfluencer content.
Within these accounts, the FCA identified 1,267 illegal adverts, which reached over 2.3 million UK accounts. Two-thirds of the adverts were from firms or individuals already on the FCA’s warning list.
The regulator called for social media companies to play a more proactive role in stopping illegal financial promotions at their source, saying they do not do enough to uphold their own policies that ban illegal content.
“This collective push with international partners is vital in helping to protect millions of consumers from harm,” said Steve Smart, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA. “We will only make real progress in the fight against financial crime if every part of the system plays its role – including social media firms.”
Other regulators involved included Ireland’s central bank, the securities commissions for the Canadian provinces of Québec, British Colombia and Ontario, and Australia’s securities and investments commission (ASIC). ASIC warned earlier in April that AI was “supercharging” online scams after taking down a record 11,964 phishing and scam websites in 2025.
In June last year, the FCA lead a similar week of action during which it made three arrests with the support of the City of London Police, authorised criminal proceedings against three more individuals, and sent seven cease and desist letters.
