Share these talks and lectures with your colleagues
Invite colleaguesResearch paper
Social media as a compliance risk for financial services: Exploring emerging risks and finding solutions to mitigate harm
Journal of Financial Compliance,
8
(3),
245-256
(2025)
Abstract
A recent industry report by Global Relay revealed that 55 per cent of compliance executives consider social media to be an emerging compliance risk. In this paper, Rob Mason explores the four key challenges that social media presents to financial services: market risk, marketing and advertising risk, record-keeping risk and consumer harm. This paper unpicks regulatory approaches across the globe to understand how regulatory bodies are adjusting existing guardrails to acknowledge and mitigate social media risks, as well as how regulators are enforcing new expectations — from marketing rules to warnings for ‘finfluencers’. Finally, this paper sets out the critical steps companies should consider to comply with the emerging social media regulatory landscape and prevent harm to business, the consumer and the wider economy.
Keywords: social media risk; regulatory compliance; records and information management; marketing rules; consumer duty
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Robert Mason has significant experience as a compliance, monitoring and surveillance expert, with a proven track record as a trader, regulator, compliance officer and surveillance technology vendor, designing, building and delivering market leading solutions. Rob has undertaken senior roles within UBS and Lloyds Banking Group, where he reviewed and enhanced the operational effectiveness of the surveillance undertaken while simultaneously navigating internal audits and regulatory visits. Before that, Rob spent five years at the FCA, where, most notably, he helped to initiate the team responsible for supervising the Market Abuse Regulation, and was the Markets Lead on Operation Tabernula, the largest insider dealing enforcement case that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has delivered.
Jennifer Clarke is an acclaimed Content Lead for financial technology organisations, combining legal, editorial and financial experience to make sense of regulations, risks and emerging trends. Having worked in legal editorial for Thomson Reuters, Jennifer moved into content creation for financial technology providers, including artificial intelligence (AI)-led surveillance company Behavox, and regulatory intelligence experts CUBE, before moving to compliant communications provider Global Relay. Her work covers the gamut of financial services and compliance, from record-keeping rules to AI, surveillance and social media risk. With almost 10 years of experience in financial editorial, Jennifer’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg and CityAM.
