Richard Coffin calls himself The Plain Bagel. The portfolio manager and investment analyst at Watson Di Primio Steel Investment Management in Ottawa adopted the nickname when he launched his YouTube channel in 2017. He reached a million subscribers in January.
Coffin is one of many financial influencers — so-called finfluencers — winning clicks and clients.
Ben Felix is chief investment officer at PWL Capital in Ottawa. He co-hosts the Rational Reminder podcast and reaches close to 400,000 followers.
Sam Lichtman balances his role as founder of Millen Wealth Advisors in London, Ont., with the Millennial Money Canada podcast. He has close to 100,000 followers across TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Unlike many finfluencers, all three have professional financial designations. They are walking, talking proof that there’s an audience for good financial content on social media, presented by qualified advisors.
It isn’t easy, but those prepared to make the resource commitment can grow their book significantly.
“This is a superpower when it comes to the next generation of financial advisors,” said Preet Banerjee, a co-founder of Advisor Video Bootcamp who wrote his doctoral thesis on the Canadian financial advice landscape. His financial education channels have over 130,000 followers on Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Canada’s financial advice business is well-served by professionals like Banerjee, Coffin and others. Still, the web is teeming with unqualified finfluencers who give the industry a bad name. And your clients are listening.
More than half (56%) of Canadian investors rate advice from social media or finfluencers as valuable or more valuable than advice from traditional financial advisors, according to a 2024 survey from the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization. Respondents who had the least financial literacy and lowest amount of investible assets were the most likely to value a finfluencer’s advice over a traditional advisor.
Investment Executive spoke with licensed advisors about how they’ve built their digital empire.
Millennial Money Canada
When Lichtman opened his first TikTok account in 2019, he wanted to remain anonymous as the firm he was at didn’t allow advisors to be on social media. His first video was of his wife paying off her student loans. It got 20,000 views.
After he went independent, he could finally associate his TikTok account with his name and enhance his online presence.
“The sole purpose behind that was because I’d seen a lot of garbage advice online and there were only a few voices in the financial advisor space,” he said. “I have better things to say than these guys do and they’re gaining a lot of traction … [so] I should be able to reach a pretty wide audience.”
Lichtman earned his certified financial planner (CFP) designation in 2019. He told us Canadians are suspicious of professional financial advisors because of poor sales practices, such as advisors who will work with “anyone with a pulse.”
Lichtman provides a link for viewers to verify his credentials, he said. “It gets like 60 to 70 clicks a month, so people are interested in verifying that.”
Be transparent with your audience, Lichtman said. Instead of using broad disclaimers at the top of a social media page, include disclaimers that are specific to each piece of content.
“I know that there’s some things I say online that people [will] take and implement. So, I try to make sure that if I’m saying something, it’s not going to be implemented harmfully,” he said.
The Plain Bagel
When Coffin started in the industry, he was the “finance guy” in his social group. He would field questions on investment over beers with friends who were beginning to accumulate savings as their careers grew.
So, he started providing basic financial education online under The Plain Bagel moniker. He initially limited his content to basic information as he didn’t have financial credentials yet. “I was very cognizant of that line in the sand,” he said.
Coffin earned his CFP in 2021 and chartered financial analyst (CFA) credentials in 2019, but he doesn’t promote either online. He did highlight his work in the industry at first. “If you start things on the right foot and establish that level of trust with your audience and establish your qualifications early, then that carries on into the future,” he said.
Eventually, Coffin’s audience members started highlighting his credentials more often than he did when sharing content or commenting on videos.
Some finfluencers share their personal investment positions with their audience, in the spirit of transparency. Coffin doesn’t publicly release his own finances, and said that the technique is sometimes abused.
“Unfortunately, some creators use transparency as an excuse to be aggressive with their recommendations even though that’s still going to be, at times, harmful for their viewers,” Coffin said. “Regardless of the approach you take, it’s just about being responsible to your audience, recognizing that even if you believe in something … there’s always risk with investments.”
The Rational Reminder
Felix earned his CFA designation in 2016. He experimented with YouTube videos in 2017 to hook readers to his blog posts. At the time, PWL was a small, independent firm that couldn’t compete with big banks’ marketing and advertising budgets, so it produced high-quality content to try to stand out. After his YouTube channel gained traction, the firm started a podcast.
He’s rarely used disclaimers in the eight years since launching his digital presence.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said, ‘This is not financial advice’ in one of our videos,” he said. “It’s not a very useful disclaimer because everybody says it.”
Instead, Felix helps his audience understand that advice should be specific to their situation and even if it makes sense for most people, it might not make sense for them.
Like a lot of professionals who take to social media for marketing purposes, Felix has carried a heavy workload.
“There’s no easy way to do it,” he said. “I used to do it at night and on the weekend because I really wanted to gain traction on my channel, and so I was just grinding.”
Eventually, PWL let Felix use part of his weekdays to create online content so he could commit to researching and writing content and interact with audience questions, he said. “It’s a serious time commitment.”
Consistency matters
Apart from transparency, advisors also need to engage consistently with their audience by finding out what motivates them to seek advice and addressing their pain points, Banerjee said.
Advisors can find ideas for their next piece of content in the comments section. “[The audience is] telling you what their pain points are by asking these questions,” Banerjee said. “A very important part of building credibility online is showing up and doing that with a certain level of cadence over time.”
Maintaining a consistent posting schedule can be difficult though.
If advisors can’t take time off work to tend to their online presence, they should figure out the minimum viable content quality they can produce given their time constraints.
Not everything has to be a Hollywood-quality production, Banerjee said. There are creators who sit on the couch and answer followers’ questions with no editing. All you really need is proper lighting and a good microphone.
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This article appears in the February issue of Investment Executive. Subscribe to the print edition, read the digital edition or read the articles online.