Someone in the wonderland of pensions has woken up to reality that social media in an influencer and that people’s behaviour might be influenced by every bit of social media from tic-toc to linked in (including Twitter (X) , Bluesky and Facebook. Oh and a few others on this phone screen..
What pensions needs to wake up to is that while it is easy to be influential to retail purchasers, it is not so easy to stay within what we now all call “guard rails”.
So on the same day as Professional Pensions is publishing some not so happy news from XPS
If savers at this stage of their working lives do engage with their pension, it is likely to amount to little more than a periodic glance at how much they have saved. A survey of industry professionals conducted by XPS Group last year found that 37% of respondents said minimal member engagement was the biggest obstacle to implementing a default retirement solution.
We remind ourselves that we use social media for everything else than boring ourselves with non-news from our pensions.
On the other hand, while members are unlikely to check their pensions regularly, they are almost certainly likely to check their social media feeds daily. It would be something of an understatement to say that social media has become ubiquitous in the modern world, serving multiple purposes, from staying in touch with friends and sharing significant updates about their lives to keeping up to date with news and current affairs.
So why not turn over our pensions to the finfluencers?
Well here is a good reason.
While Martin Lewis, Iona Bain , Tom McPhail and Steve Webb are well known not just on the TV but on our phones, so are a whole lot of not so savoury characters.
This from Muna Abi on the same day as Martin Richmond’s summoning of us to social media!
The Financial Conduct Authority has targeted illegal finfluencers in a coordinated international enforcement week aimed at protecting consumers from harmful financial promotions.
Around 17 regulators worldwide took part in the “week of action”, which combined enforcement activity, consumer awareness campaigns and educational programmes for finfluencers seeking to operate within the rules.
Meanwhile, the FCA secured a guilty plea from Geordie Shore’s Aaron Chalmers for illegal social media promotions and has launched criminal proceedings against two other individuals for similar offences.
It also issued four targeted warning letters to individuals suspected of unauthorised financial promotions, alongside 34 warning alerts against firms or individuals and 14 updates to existing warnings.
OMG Social Media is influential but not always helpful. Pensions are boring , work is boring and the two go well together.
What we need is a simple way to work out what our “deferred pay” and that can be done through the boring things we talk to HR and Finance at our employers.
