—TechRound does not recommend or endorse any financial, investment, gambling, trading or other advice, practices, companies or operators. All articles are purely informational—
Pick up your phone, open TikTok and search “investing.” Within seconds, you will be watching someone tell you which crypto is about to explode, why leveraged trading is the fastest path to wealth, or which three stocks to buy right now. For millions of young people in the UK, this is where financial education now begins, and in many cases, where it ends.
The appeal is not hard to understand. Traditional financial advice is built for people who already have money, time and patience for jargon. TikTok is free, fast and speaks in a language that actually lands. So when Nationwide’s research found that nearly half of young Britons (43%) now trust financial tips from social media and group chats more than traditional financial websites, it reflected a real and understandable shift in behaviour.
The problem, according to new research, is the quality of what they are finding when they get there.
The Trust Shift
The move away from traditional financial advice channels did not happen overnight, and it did not happen without reason.
Why Have Young People Stopped Listening To Traditional Sources?
Independent financial advisers are expensive and largely out of reach for younger people without savings or assets. Bank websites are dense and slow. Government guidance is written for a compliance officer, not a 22-year-old trying to work out whether to put money into an ISA or a stocks and shares account.
TikTok solved a real access problem. Short-form video made financial concepts feel approachable in a way that no bank has managed to replicate. Creators who talk about money like a person rather than an institution have built large, loyal audiences. The Nationwide/Censuswide survey data confirms that this audience has genuinely moved, with nearly half of young Britons now trusting what they find on social media and in group chats over established financial websites.
However, not all of that content is bad, and some of the most-watched finance creators produce genuinely useful material. Of course, on any platform where engagement drives reach, the quality of what rises to the top is not guaranteed by its accuracy.
What The Data Actually Shows
DayTrading.com’s Finance TikTok Report Card is a detailed attempt to put a number on the problem. Researchers selected the most-viewed finance and investing videos on the platform, analysing content that collectively received over 256,000 views, and graded each one on four criteria: accuracy, risk disclosure, oversimplification and educational value.
The Overall Grades
The results do not make for comfortable reading. 70% of videos failed to achieve a B grade or higher, and only 20% earned an A for accuracy. Paul Holmes, lead author of the report and a specialist in retail trading trends, says that pattern reflects something deeper than a few bad actors. “This isn’t just about TikTok,” he argues. “It’s about how a generation learns to handle money and invest in an environment where the loudest voice is rewarded, not the most accurate one.”
Where Content Succeeded And Where It Failed
The subject matter made a notable difference in how videos performed. Content on compounding interest and salary breakdowns in finance careers earned grades of B+ and A-, respectively, praised for being fact-based and for encouraging long-term thinking.
At the other end of the scale, videos on leveraged trading and cryptocurrency received the lowest scores, with some earning F grades across multiple categories. One video promoting leveraged trading as the fastest route to wealth was marked down for offering no risk disclosure, glamourising a high-risk strategy and making no mention of margin calls or liquidation risk.
The most consistent failure across the dataset was oversimplification. 60% of the TikToks analysed scored either a D or an F for oversimplification. That means stripping away enough context on time horizons, fees and potential downsides that a beginner viewer would struggle to make any informed decision based on what they had watched.
Why The Worst Content Travels Furthest
Those poor results are not simply a reflection of careless creators. They are, to a large extent, a product of how short-form video platforms are built.
The Role Of The Algorithm
Content is surfaced based on watch time, shares and saves, rather than the quality or accuracy of the information it contains. Bold claims, certainty and hype are easy to package into 60 seconds. Cautious, balanced advice, the kind that includes caveats and risk disclosures, is considerably harder to make compelling at that length.
Holmes puts it plainly: “The overwhelming trend is toward content that prioritises virality over accuracy, entertainment over education.” The DayTrading.com data bears that out. High-scoring educational videos, the ones that earned good marks for accuracy and risk disclosure, consistently attracted lower engagement than the low-scoring, sensational material sitting alongside them.
The algorithm is not malfunctioning. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do. The problem is that accurate financial content is structurally disadvantaged on the platforms where a generation is now going to learn about money.
The Regulatory Gap
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has strict requirements around financial promotions, and for regulated fintech companies, the cost of getting them wrong is serious. Yet the DayTrading.com findings suggest that a large portion of finance TikTok content may be operating well outside those same rules.
What The Rules Say And Who They Apply To
Any business marketing a financial product to UK consumers must include clear risk warnings. 30% of the videos in the DayTrading.com study scored an F for risk disclosure, with only 10% achieving an A.
The impact this has on fintech founders building compliant products is that it creates an increasingly uneven playing field. A startup must clear considerable regulatory hurdles to promote a savings account or investment product, whilst a creator with no financial qualifications can make the same claims to a far larger audience and face no regulatory consequences.
The Limits Of Individual Responsibility
The FCA has been stepping up its oversight of so-called “finfluencers”, but enforcement remains patchy. Holmes’ advice to viewers in the meantime is direct: “Treat bold claims with caution, and tune in to creators who focus on education over engagement.”
It is sound guidance, but it also illustrates the scale of the challenge. Placing the burden of judgement on young people who turned to TikTok precisely because they lacked financial knowledge is not a solution. Instead, it is a holding position while the systemic problem goes unaddressed.
A Problem Without a Clear Owner
What makes this difficult is that responsibility is spread across multiple parties, none of whom have so far moved fast enough. The FCA can expand its remit and pursue more finfluencer cases. TikTok could redesign how financial content is recommended and ranked, prioritising verified or compliant creators over those who simply perform well on engagement metrics. Financial services firms could invest more seriously in content that is genuinely built for social formats rather than repurposed from their websites.
There is also an argument that this represents a real opening for fintech and edtech startups willing to build financial education that can compete for young people’s attention on its own terms, without cutting corners on accuracy to do so. The Nationwide data shows the audience is already there, but the DayTrading.com data shows it is currently being badly served.
And so, until one of those routes produces results, the situation described in this report will persist. Hundreds of thousands of young people will keep making financial decisions based on content that, by any reasonable standard, has already let them down.
—TechRound does not recommend or endorse any financial, investment, gambling, trading or other advice, practices, companies or operators. All articles are purely informational—
