Social media a gateway to better financial inclusion, says Komolafe

Speaking at an event hosted by Pinsent Masons, Komolafe, founder of the YouTube channel and weekly podcast ‘The Conversation of Money’, said people are turning to social media for information about financial services, but that the information they get back is often wrong or misleading. He said major financial services brands are “needed in the social media space to be to be a source of credible information”.

“The trick for providers is how do you do that in a way that is authentic, that makes it relatable, that makes it relevant to your audience, because one thing that I have learned doing what I do across the podcast, across YouTube, and doing a little bit of TV work now, is that people do not necessarily care about what you do as a brand,” said Komolafe. “They want to know what's in it for them. If you can connect on that level, everything else comes – you use it as a funnel to get people’s attention and then it translates into customers a bit later on.”

“It is a big challenge because you have got to make sure you are doing everything compliantly, but it is a really important consideration and step that needs to be taken,” he said.

Statistics on social media use highlight the opportunities for financial institutions, according to Komolafe. He said the personal finance hashtag on TikTok had 5.7 billion views as of April this year, and that the number of views for the top 10 videos that appear when searching for investing on YouTube exceeds 10.6 million.

Komolafe, who is a qualified financial adviser, said the statistics show how some people, who may not necessarily have been taught about personal finance or investments in school or from their parents, are using social media to overcome the stigma of having to ask others for information. He called on industry to take the lead in responding to that trend and address the issue of financial inclusion.

“A lot of people are going to social media for information because they want to feel as though they can be included in this conversation about finances, money, investing, better debt management, money management… Regardless of how brands think about social media and whether they feel or not that it is relevant, you cannot deny the fact that you are in direct competition with social media for the attention of your customers,” he said.

“Social media really is a way for ordinary people to access information in a way that they feel is relevant, authentic and applicable to them – and those are the three key metrics: being authentic, being relatable, and actually being relevant to them,” Komolafe said.

Social media engagement was one of several issues Komolafe discussed with Yvonne Dunn and Luke Scanlon at the Pinsent Masons event, which examined why financial services businesses need to think about their digital future.

Other issues discussed included the opportunities of embedded finance and data in financial services, the value of collaboration between financial institutions and fintech companies, the growing ESG agenda, and changing regulation around operational resilience.