South Africa’s financial literacy infrastructure has not kept up with how young people consume information, and that gap has consequences for all of us.
On Youth Day, it is tempting to frame this as a cautionary tale about a generation making poor choices – but it is not. It is a story about a generation that made a completely rational decision: when the system they were supposed to trust became inaccessible, expensive, or spoke a language designed to exclude them, they went to what they knew best. They turned to platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, where financial advice – whether certified and accurate or not – is instant, relatable and freely given by so-called “finfluencers”. And increasingly, they are turning to AI for the same reason.
The system failed them first
Two-thirds of Gen Z globally now use social media and online resources to make financial decisions, and roughly 14% rely on AI tools to answer their financial questions. These are not the choices of a reckless generation, but rather those of a generation that has been underserved.
Here is the uncomfortable truth the financial services industry needs to sit with: licensed institutions were playing the same language games long before finfluencers arrived. In 2023, a South African bank ran a festive season campaign with the tagline “ke investment, not a skoloto”, positioning a personal loan as an investment product. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority fined them R700 000 for it. A licensed, regulated, professionally staffed institution looked a young, digitally active audience in the eye and told them debt was wealth. If that is what credible looks like, it is little wonder young people are sceptical.
An uneven playing field
A licensed financial advisor in South Africa operates under the FAIS Act, carries a fiduciary duty to act in a client’s best interest, and faces real enforcement consequences when they fall short. A finfluencer with 200 000 followers faces none of that. The FSCA has no meaningful jurisdiction over the financial content they produce, and SARS is still working to formally define what a social media influencer even is – Commissioner Edward Kieswetter acknowledged as recently as February that the definition has not been hardened.
AI sits in an even more precarious position. It has no fiduciary duty, no professional indemnity, and no accountability if its guidance leads you to make a catastrophic decision about your retirement annuity. It does not have your best interests at heart and is incapable of genuinely caring whether you succeed or not. These tools are designed to generate plausible-sounding responses – they cannot be trusted to calculate accurate tax implications, verify current legislation, or account for your specific debt profile, health risks, or estate planning needs. They hallucinate, and they generalise. And they do both with remarkable confidence.
There is also a data privacy reality that rarely gets discussed. To generate a “personalised” financial plan, an AI tool needs in-depth access to your financial life: your assets, income, debt, and savings. Unregulated platforms offer no guarantee of how that information is stored, used, or protected. Young people who would hesitate to hand that information to a stranger are willingly typing it into a chatbot, because the interface feels familiar and non-judgmental.
What credible really looks like
The answer is not to tell young South Africans to put their phones down and book an appointment with a financial planner – that is the kind of advice that ends conversations. The solution is to close the gap that drove them to unregulated spaces in the first place.
That means the financial services industry meeting young people where they are: accessible language, transparent fee structures, and tools that inform rather than overwhelm. It means being honest that AI has a legitimate role as a starting point for understanding – to demystify concepts, explain terminology, or sketch a broad picture – but that it should never be the final word on anything that affects your financial future. For verified, regulated guidance, the FSCA’s financial literacy resources and platforms like MyMoney.co.za exist precisely to make credible information as accessible as a TikTok video. Use them.
Most importantly, it means the industry stops treating financial literacy as someone else’s problem. The advice gap is not a youth problem. It is a structural problem, and the structure is ours to fix.
This Youth Day, the most useful thing the financial services sector can do is not warn young people about the dangers of finfluencers or wave a finger at AI. It is to ask why these platforms were more compelling than we were to begin with – and do something about it.
