New Zealand's Financial Markets Authority (FMA) said today (Wednesday) it has joined 16 counterparts in a second annual Global Week of Action against unlawful finfluencers, a coordinated push that now spans five continents and sweeps in major retail trading hubs including Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.

The FMA stated it contacted 14 finfluencers active across social media platforms as part of the operation, which started on April 20 and runs through this week.

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The Kiwi regulator said those contacts have already produced results, with misleading or harmful content taken down, including advertisements aimed at New Zealanders. Some operators have trimmed the scope of their offerings, and others have stopped serving New Zealand customers altogether, the agency said.

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Samantha McGuire, manager of regulatory services at the FMA, said the international coordination reflects how quickly social media has become a primary channel for retail financial information.

"As financial promotions become more prevalent on social media, international collaboration is crucial in our ongoing efforts to strengthen consumer protection, safeguard individuals from misleading financial promotions and support a fair online environment," McGuire said.

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The FMA said most finfluencers operate within the law and can help broaden access to investing, but acknowledged it has seen a rise in cases where operators stray outside regulatory boundaries or mislead followers.

The 2026 edition marks a sharp expansion from last year's inaugural operation, which brought together nine regulators led by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority. The current line-up includes ASIC in Australia, Belgium's FSMA, Brazil's CVM, three Canadian agencies, the Danish FSA, Hong Kong's SFC, India's SEBI, the Central Bank of Ireland, Norway's Finanstilsynet, two Qatari regulators, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the UAE Capital Market Authority and the FCA.

Copy Trading and Luxury Lifestyle Content Flagged as Priority Risks

Copy trading has become a specific area of concern, the FMA said, with finfluencers pushing followers to mirror trades as a supposedly easy path to profit. The agency said those offerings often involve complex, high-risk products, and promotions are frequently dressed up with images of luxury cars, designer goods and other signals of wealth that downplay the actual risks.

That pattern echoes findings from regulators across the coalition. The FCA this year criminally charged three finfluencers, Charles Hunter, Kayan Kalipha and Luke Desmaris, over the promotion of unauthorized contracts for difference, with the agency citing the use of "lavish lifestyles, often falsely, to promote success."

ASIC last year issued 18 warning notices to Australian finfluencers suspected of pushing CFDs and over-the-counter derivatives without a license.

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How far regulators are willing to go varies widely. The FCA has published more than 50 warning alerts, triggered over 650 content takedown requests and referenced one case in which around 90,000 retail investors lost roughly £75 million through a firm promoted by online personalities.

Hong Kong's SFC secured the city's first custodial sentence against a finfluencer last November, when Chau Pak Yin was handed a six-week prison term for running a paid Telegram group offering unlicensed investment advice.

The UAE's Securities and Commodities Authority has taken a different approach, becoming the first regulator globally to require a license for individuals producing financial content online. The UK, by contrast, has not signaled any move toward licensing, relying instead on enforcement under existing financial promotion rules.

New Zealand's FMA sits closer to the enforcement-led model, without a standalone licensing regime for online content creators. The regulator is already moving to tighten its retail derivatives framework more broadly, having proposed leverage caps of up to 30:1 on CFDs offered to retail clients, and it previously cancelled the derivatives issuer license of Rockfort Markets after an extended compliance dispute.

Demand for Online Financial Content Keeps Growing

The regulatory push is running into a powerful tailwind. A BaFin survey of 1,000 recent investors found that more than half of respondents from Gen Y and Gen Z view social media as a viable alternative to traditional financial advice, and 57% of those following finfluencers had bought products directly through links the creators shared.

A separate CMC Markets study cited by the FCA found that 33% of retail traders are more likely to act on a trade when a followed influencer flags an opportunity.

For New Zealand, the FMA said it is running a week of educational social media posts for consumers and finfluencers, has released a podcast on the sector's risks, and has refreshed its guidance pages for both audiences.