February 12, 2026

Episode 396: Theresa Ebden - Protecting Investors at the OSC

February 12, 2026

Theresa Ebden is the Vice President, Investor Office at the Ontario Securities Commission. She is a strategic leader with more than 25 years of experience in global marketing, communications, and financial journalism. At Accenture, Theresa helped lead the creation and rollout of major global programs including client value measurement, the global COVID-19 client response, and she also had leadership roles on pro bono client initiatives in the sustainability and nonprofit industries.

Her journalism career spanned Bloomberg News, The Globe and Mail, and BNN, where she covered financial markets and interviewed global leaders. Theresa holds an MBA from the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario (gold medalist) and a Journalism degree from Toronto Metropolitan University. She mentors MBA students and serves on several non-profit boards.

In this episode of the Rational Reminder Podcast, we are joined by Theresa Ebden, Vice President of the Investor Office at the Ontario Securities Commission, for a deep dive into how regulators are thinking about modern investor risks—from AI-powered scams to finfluencers and the gamification of investing apps. Theresa explains how the OSC works to protect investors through policy, education, behavioral research, and direct engagement with the public, and why investor education is one of the most powerful tools regulators have.

Key Points From This Episode:

(0:01:55) Overview of the OSC and why its investor research and education work matters.

(5:42) What the Ontario Securities Commission does and its mandate to protect investors and capital markets.

(6:25) Inside the OSC Investor Office: policy, education and outreach, and the investor contact centre.

(9:28) How the Investor Office identifies priority issues using inquiry data, behavioral insights, and global collaboration.

(12:11) The nature of investor inquiries: fraud, crypto confusion, complaints, and recovery room scams.

(14:01) How contact-centre data feeds into education, outreach, and policy responses.

(16:07) Overview of GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca and its role in investor education.

(20:43) Major retail investor risks today: AI-enhanced scams, finfluencers, dark patterns, and gamification.

(24:43) What to do if you’re impersonated by AI in scam advertisements.

(29:28) What a “finfluencer” is and the different categories they fall into.

(31:01) Research findings on how strongly finfluencers influence investor decisions.

(32:55) Why non-investors are especially vulnerable to finfluencer advice and social-media scams.

(36:11) How investors can evaluate online financial advice and check credentials.

(38:02) Regulatory challenges in overseeing finfluencers and online financial content.

(41:04) How AI magnifies traditional scams and why AI-enhanced fraud is more effective.

(43:42) Mitigation strategies: education, just-in-time warnings, and system-level tools.

(47:25) Relationship investment scams and why they are especially damaging.

(52:53) Research on gamification in investing apps and its effects on investor behavior.

(55:25) The Get Smarter About Trading simulator and how it demonstrates gamification effects.

(57:19) How gamification can be used positively to improve diversification and outcomes.

(58:16) Theresa’s perspective on success and her focus on improving the individual investor experience.

Read The Transcript:

Ben Felix: This is the Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision-making from two Canadians. We're hosted by me, Benjamin Felix, Chief Investment Officer and Dan Bortolotti, Portfolio Manager at PWL Capital.

Dan Bortolotti: Welcome to number 396, getting closer and closer to that 400 episode milestone.

Ben Felix: An arbitrary milestone that we have nothing special planned for.

Dan Bortolotti: That's right.

Ben Felix: Yes, but we still have time. Today, we welcomed Theresa Ebden, who is the Vice President of the Investor Office at the Ontario Securities Commission.

If that doesn't sound exciting, I want everyone to know that Ross, who listeners will know from our year-end episode where you got to hear Ross from OneDigital, who sits in on our episode recordings to make sure they are compliant. As a compliance person, Ross was on the edge of his seat for the whole discussion. I think that's important to point out for listeners.

Now, we had a fantastic conversation with Theresa at the Ontario Securities Commission. It's a really interesting organization. Theresa introduces a little bit about who they are and what they do.

They're a securities regulator, obviously, in Ontario, but they do a lot of really, really interesting work on investor research and outreach education. Between those two things, they've produced just a tremendous amount of really, really high-quality content, both really high-quality research papers, but also retail investor-focused educational material through their GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca website, which we talk about during the conversation. You'll hear me get excited about it because I really do think it's a fantastic website.

We talked a little bit about who the OSC are and what they do. We talked about some of their research on finfluencers. I was interested to find out, Dan, that I am, in fact, a finfluencer. I think you are, too.

Dan Bortolotti: I don't know. I feel honored to have that label bestowed on me.

As we're going to talk about a little bit, one of the hazards of being a finfluencer is you are a target for fraud. We're going to get into that a little bit, share a little bit of a personal story that you had, Ben.

Ben Felix: Interesting messages to get from people that I was being impersonated. Anyway, so we talked about finfluencers and just the role that they're playing in retail investing and how people are consuming the advice and being influenced by the advice from finfluencers. We talked about AI, the example you just mentioned, Dan, and some of the other ways that it's being used.

A lot about scams, which I think Ross mentioned. That's one of the parts that he really enjoyed. From a compliance and regulation perspective, just what can we do about that in terms of investor education and mitigations?

Then we talked about gamification, which is one that people think about scams as, oh, yeah, you got scammed. Gamifications are these more subtle nudges that can happen in investing apps. It's not illegal.

It's not breaking any regulations or laws, but there's little incentives that can make you behave differently than you would have otherwise inside of investing apps. We've talked in the past about options trading and individual stock trading and how that gets gamified and promoted through apps and then leads to not great investor outcomes. Anyway, so we talked a little bit about that and how the OSC is thinking about it and the research that they've done on it. That was pretty cool.

Dan Bortolotti: Yeah, it's interesting on the gamification point. I mean, there's all of these really well-established techniques that retail stores and casinos and even restaurants and things like that use to get you to spend more money, stay longer, spend more. This has become a feature of investing platforms now as well too.

It's one thing to stay a little longer and order two desserts. It's another thing to just be subtly nudged into really dangerous long-term investor behavior. I think as we're going to talk about here, a lot of these nudges just encourage people to trade more, transact, and all of that is associated with poor outcomes over the long-term.

Ben Felix: And more profits for the institutions promoting those behaviors.

Dan Bortolotti: Indeed.

Ben Felix: That's the real rub. Okay, so Theresa is a strategic leader with more than 25 years of experience in marketing communications and financial journalism. She was previously at Accenture where she helped lead the creation and rollout of major global programs, including Client Value Measurement, the global COVID-19 client response. She also had leadership roles on pro bono client initiatives in the sustainability and nonprofit industries.

Very interesting background. During her journalism career, she was at Bloomberg News, the Globe and Mail, and BNN, and she covered financial markets and interviewed global leaders. She's got an MBA from the Ivy Business School at the University of Western Ontario.

She was a gold medalist there, and that's one of the top, if not the top business school in Canada. She's also got a journalism degree from Toronto Metropolitan University, and she mentors MBA students and sits on several nonprofit boards. Really interesting person and really interesting perspectives from where she sits at the OSC, which is a regulatory body, but her office, the Investor Office, is really focused on the experience of investors in Ontario specifically, but I think it's applicable to any investor. Anything else, Dan?

Dan Bortolotti: No, let's get to the interview.

Ben Felix: All right, let's go. Theresa Ebden, welcome to the Rational Reminder Podcast.

Theresa Ebden: Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Ben Felix: Excited to be talking to you. To give our listeners some background, can you describe what the Ontario Securities Commission is?

Theresa Ebden: Absolutely. The OSC is an independent crown agency. We regulate Ontario's capital markets.

We make rules that have the force of law by adopting policies that influence the behavior of capital markets participants. Our mandate is to provide protection to investors from unfair, improper, or fraudulent practices, also to foster fair, efficient, and competitive capital markets and confidence in capital markets, and to foster capital formation, and to contribute to the stability of the overall financial system and the reduction of systemic risk.

Ben Felix: Important stuff. What does the OSC Investor Office do?

Theresa Ebden: The Investor Office has to do with providing protection to investors. It's a key part of our mandate, as you heard. We work to protect investors.

We make and enforce the rules. Of course, the Investor Office leads the efforts of the OSC to identify and address investor issues and concerns. I have three main work streams in the Investor Office.

I have a policy advisory team. That's a team of lawyers, and they work on investor-facing policy. There is something we refer to as the OBSI, or Binding Authority Project, which has to do with pursuing binding authority for recommendations by OBSI for investor redress.

What does that mean? If you have an advisor who has put you in something that is way out of your league, and you didn't realize it, and perhaps you need to make a complaint, the complaint goes to OBSI. Currently, that is not binding, meaning it's a recommendation, but the idea is after this initiative, it would be.

It's an initiative that's being worked on right across Canada with the CSA. Another example of policy that this team works on is the Vulnerable Investors Project. This came out of a huge push that we did with our Seniors Advisory Council.

That was a few years ago that started up, and the idea was to take lots of advice and make sure that we were embedding the needs of seniors and other vulnerable investors into our day-to-day regulatory activities. With that came some tools like the Trusted Contact Person Initiative, which you may have heard of. Then, of course, they help me with our international collaboration across with OECD and International Organization of Securities Commissions.

That's a very active, helpful team in the Investor Office. Then we also have Education and Outreach. They handle all of our education and outreach platforms and projects.

GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca, all of our social media channels. There's a major effort to make sure that we're educating investors about everything in the financial literacy basket because we know that that is what helps inoculate against fraud and help people have a better experience as investors. Finally, there's the Inquiries and Contact Center.

They take calls from the public, and we process about 10,000 cases a year. We'll have market participants call in as well. Across that, I've got a group working on investor experience and the segmentation of investors and understanding their behaviors, working with our Behavioral Insights Group.

That's a little bit about what we do in the Investor Office, all working together to just basically make our capital markets more inviting, thriving, and secure.

Ben Felix: Holy smokes. There's a lot going on.

Theresa Ebden: I love it. It's great.

Ben Felix: How does the Investor Office identify which issues to focus on? Like you mentioned the Trusted Contact Person, which we've talked about in this podcast a bunch of times. How do you guys decide this is the priority?

Theresa Ebden: There are many different ways that we do that. Now, we do have an expert investor advisory panel. We work very closely with.

They meet monthly. That has to do with all the different policy initiatives that may be coming down the pipe. We share information in terms of different education initiatives.

We also work very closely within the OSC, within the strategic regulation group that I sit. We've got an Innovation Office. We have an area that deals with thought leadership and behavioral insights, horizon scanning for issues.

Our chief economist, we've got a lot that we work in there. We have all of the different meetings that will happen across the commission, enforcement, corporate finance, all of these groups to make sure we have our ears to the ground. There's also a lot of international collaboration with regulators through Committee 8 in the International Organization of Securities Commissions, 38 different regulators on that.

We meet a few times a year and have some different initiatives that we work on and share information about global phenomena, including frauds and scams and how best to address that with investors. And then our Contact Center at the OSC that I mentioned earlier, it's our first point of contact for many investors. We collect data from the calls that we receive there, obviously protecting the privacy of those individuals, but making sure any key issues are understood and elevated.

We work very closely with our Behavioral Insights Team and thought leadership as well. So really, if you want to identify major issues affecting investors, you have to understand what motivates them and how they're thinking. So that is an important team as well.

And then of course, last but definitely not least, there's a lot of collaboration nationally with the Canadian Securities Administrators. So that's the blanket organization for securities regulators in Canada. So my team works across a couple of different CSA groups on different initiatives.

I mentioned the Binding Authority Project, but also the Investor Education Committee. They also meet very regularly and share information on different campaigns and then have campaigns that they'll put out as well to educate investors. So there's a lot of different ways that we come at it when we're identifying the issues affecting investors today.

Dan Bortolotti: Now, Theresa, you mentioned that you get, I think you said 10,000 or so inquiries annually. What's the nature of those questions? Is it primarily people who have complaints about investments that they've been put in by advisors, or are they focused more on fraud and other sorts of things that don't have anything necessarily to do with the financial industry per se, or is it a mix of all of those things?

Theresa Ebden: We get everything. This is a contact center rather than a call center. So they are actually taking on cases, handling different issues that people may have.

75% of that are market participants with queries that can be anything to do with quarterly filings or what have you. So it's a mix of skills on the team, lawyers, paralegals, different people who come from different areas of experience, enforcement, some former enforcement people worked in there as well. And that is helpful for the investor calls.

A fairly large portion of the calls are actually fraud related. So people calling in and saying, I invested in this crypto investment a couple of years ago, I've put in this much, now I'm not hearing from them, or I have hired recovery services, which is what we call the recovery room scam, where they come back at you trying to get your money back. So we get a lot of questions about that, which we sort of help them understand whether or not the individual was registered.

This is a legitimate organization. And then sometimes you'll get investors calling and not quite understanding what they've invested in. If you have bought crypto, for example, and you maybe don't understand how it works, what a wallet is, et cetera, et cetera, it's just helping them as well.

So there's different areas. Also, if you have to make a complaint or seek help after a loss, or if there has been a disgorgement order by our Capital Markets Tribunal, people will call in there with inquiries about that. We'll take calls on anything to help people understand their investments.

Ben Felix: It's an incredible service. And then those data flow into strategic priorities for the OSC.

Theresa Ebden: Absolutely. So the data, I'll talk about that first with the increase in Contact Center. So obviously there's a whole CRM that goes into, and we do distill different issues that we find and share.

We meet weekly. I have a team of managers across the different divisions and share any kind of trends we're noticing or major initiatives on the way. I'll use the example of the recovery room scam that I talked about earlier.

If you know someone who's been defrauded, likely they've also received a follow-up call, and we're seeing this more and more, where an organization has said, oh, I represent a service that can help you get your money back, or I'm investigating this, I can help you. It can be anything. I mean, they'll say anything to get your money, but a common one is just open up this wallet, put $25,000 in it, which is a minimum amount that you need to have in there, and then we'll dump all the money back in there.

That's a very common one. So that's the recovery room scam. When the Contact Center was getting a lot of those, we started with an example of what a call sounds like, what the key points are.

Then we moved into the Education and Outreach team and walked the wider branch through the materials that we have to educate people on frauds and scams and this particular type of fraud and scam. And then we brought in the Policy Team that had sort of the different policy initiatives that we could speak to that would help maybe slow down some of the impacts of these fraudsters' attempts, like the Trusted Contact Person. So just helping everyone understand the end-to-end work that happens across the Investor Office, it kind of encourages that connective tissue and gets the team working together in new ways, just even that lunchroom conversation ideas moving through just to get creative and how we can really drive the content forward.

Dan Bortolotti: Now, speaking about the education mandate, can you tell us a little bit about the GetSmarterAboutMoney site and who's the audience and who's creating the content for that site?

Theresa Ebden: It's us. So GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca, it's our investor facing site and it's actually one of Canada's most visited financial education websites. It's won a few awards and there were almost 5 million visits to the site last year.

So we've got a whole raft of content, games, tools, plain language articles, resources, and it really takes a broader scope because when you talk to someone about investing, they're also thinking about their money. So it's really financial literacy as well. So we work with different partners on the content as well.

It's written by the team. We'll refresh articles as we go over time as well and keep it fresh, but it's anything from budgeting to investing, retirement. It's a place where you can go and learn about the different kinds of frauds and scams as well and how to avoid them.

The most popular item on it is the compound interest calculator, hands down. We have Investing Academy on there as well. This is a suite of just free open online courses.

They're designed to help people learn the fundamentals of how investing works. We're making it available to as many people in Ontario as possible. So we provide services or the information in 23 languages to help people make more informed investment decisions.

Speaking of languages, we also have an OSC in the Community program that falls under our outreach area. And so we have staff who will go around to different communities, seniors' homes, new Canadian centers, anywhere that makes a request, gets in our queue. And we speak with investors, including newcomers and multicultural groups.

And we deliver these presentations on fraud prevention, investing 101, and the client advisor relationship. And we encourage internally anyone within the OSC who would like to come out and speak to do so. Although we do have a team who handles that as well.

But more broadly, lots of GetSmarterAboutMoney social media channels. We're actually on quite a few because we're recognizing that people get their information from many different sources. So you can go to YouTube or Facebook, Instagram, or on X, Pinterest, Blue Sky, and recently Reddit, which is proving to be pretty popular as well.

So in all, when you sum it all up, adds up to 17 million visitors to our resources last year.

Ben Felix: It's crazy. It's really good content. I'll frequently use screen captures of different parts of that website.

If I'm talking about a concept in one of my videos, I'll show just that description, the way that the GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca website has described it. Because I find that there's just such concise, plain language explanations of basic and sometimes not so basic financial concepts. So it really is good content.

Theresa Ebden: Oh, thanks. I really encourage the team and they're so creative to just do different things. They've been having a bit of fun on Instagram and also playing around with our mascot, that little owl you see. The owl's name is Oscar.

Ben Felix: It's a good name.

Theresa Ebden: Yes. So we do have a great team right across there and they'll work with everyone right across the Commission that they need to, to get that information and everyone understands how important it is. So in a way it's a culmination of the body of knowledge that people in the OSC have in order to help the people of Ontario and beyond, whoever wants to access it.

And of course, informed by what comes in from the Contact Center, our advisory panel, and all of that. We have a section too, with articles about the latest research at the OSC. We have a very robust research group and there's a very cool section on the psychology of investing.

So our behavioral science experts have designed articles to help people be more aware of the biases that may impact their financial decision-making. There is a behavioral bias checker. Have you used that one?

Ben Felix: No, not that one specifically.

Theresa Ebden: That's a neat one. It helps you sort of identify any bias that you may have. And we all have them, right?

We all come to the table with different biases. And so it takes people through a series of questions and scenarios to identify which biases they may be most susceptible to when it comes to financial behavior.

Ben Felix: Yeah, it's very, very cool. It's a great resource. We've talked about a lot of different things and a lot of the ways that the OSC is figuring out what the priorities are.

Can you talk about what the major retail investors that the OSC is watching are today?

Theresa Ebden: I would say first, the rising risk from AI-enhanced scams. We're going into March. It's fraud prevention month.

That'll be happening soon. And then so scams using AI, such as deepfake voices, maybe it's a certain political leader, if you feel is encouraging you to buy crypto, that's a very common one, the very common deepfake, or more convincing phishing schemes. They can pose very high risks, much higher than traditional fraud.

They're going after your savings. And often these are very large sums. It is not out of the realm of normalcy for us to get calls from people who have had millions taken over years from these.

That is, I would say right now, one of the main retail investor issues. The growing influence of finfluencers, because technology giveth, technology taketh away. I'm a major technology advocate.

I think that when used for good, it can do a lot of good. It's a great magnifier. And as people go into social media platforms looking for answers, it's given rise to what we call the finfluencer, which I'm sure you're very familiar with.

We have some recent research that shows that financial influencers on social media can significantly sway retail investor decisions, and that sometimes leads people to unsuitable or risky choices. I saw this video on YouTube. This guy sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

He's recommending this. And you may or may not realize that person may or may not be paid to say what they're saying. They may or may not be qualified to say what they're saying.

And so there are good finfluencers out there. And they do a great service. There are also some bad actors out there.

And then there's sort of a middle ground where perhaps you just need to kind of go out and get a few different viewpoints before you make your decisions. I would say that misleading online design, sometimes called dark patterns, trading platforms that use subtle digital design tricks that push investors towards certain choices, which may not always align with their best interests. And this is not unique to our industry at all.

I mean, anyone who's played a game online or even used Duolingo, which is super addictive and fun, these same things like collecting points, giving you sort of different pushes daily, rewarding you for frequent behavior, that can happen with trading platforms as well. And it's not necessarily to the benefit of your long-term financial health. Misleading online design and the gamification on trading apps, badges and rewards and prompts that nudge investors towards more trading or risk taking.

These are some of the retail investor issues I look at. I mentioned crypto related risks and fraud. Just in general, there is a rising level of complaints coming from do it yourself investors.

And so we've highlighted some of those issues, including confusion around increasingly complex products, losses tied to volatility and challenges around using online platforms. So those are some of the major things I would say occupy the team today

Ben Felix: We have a whole bunch of questions on each of those things because there are research papers on the OSC site that we based our questions on. So that's good. I do want to jump into questions on finfluencers, but I want to ask you about the AI stuff.

I've had twice in the last few weeks sent to me screenshots of ads that are showing up on my YouTube videos that are an AI version of me trying to entice people to participate in some kind of scam. I think because my viewers tend to be relatively sophisticated or knowledgeable or skeptical, they've hopefully not been caught in it, but they've sent like, hey Ben, just confirming this isn't you. I'm pretty sure this is a scam. What should I be doing about that?

Theresa Ebden: Well, first of all, you should absolutely report it. First report it to the police. If someone's impersonating you, that is right there our cause to call your local police.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Center needs to know about that. They collect data on this and you can call our Contact Center as well. Inquiries@osc.ca if you just prefer to send an email. We do hear of this a lot. I'm sorry this happened to you. It must feel like such a violation, particularly as you work to build up a good brand and to have someone do that.

It's cold comfort, but they impersonate everyone. They even impersonate us. There was just a warning out about the CSA impersonation scam a few weeks ago.

So major economists, politicians, as my managers in the Contact Center say, they'll do anything to get your money. You absolutely should report that.

Ben Felix: Good feedback. Scary stuff for sure. And I feel bad.

I hope people aren't getting scammed with my likeness. I feel pretty helpless. The platforms don't do much about it.

Theresa Ebden: It definitely needs to be reported. We're seeing that with these, it's the convergence of technology coming together for bad purposes. You can use technology to fight it, but what we're seeing in terms of investor scams is the traditional scam that would have happened before.

When I first worked at the OSC, back in 2009 to 2011, boiler room scams were big. They called them out because it's just basically people melting through, working the phones and trying to scam people. But AI makes it even faster at scale.

You have these frequent messages. They're very polished. They're very convincing.

The deepfakes, the voice cloning, the fake endorsements, bots that will build entire social media strategies, sites, and then exploiting interest in AI itself. So scammers will promote fake or misleading AI-powered investment opportunities like Quantum AI and capitalizing on the hype and limited understanding of the technology as well. You talked a little bit about deepfakes and voice cloning, the grandparent and emergency scams as well.

Not so much tied to investments, but will take your investment for sure, where you get that phone call from your grandchild or vulnerable family member, and they say maybe they've been in a car accident, or the other guy has a nosebleed, he needs money to get out for bails. They're going to send someone over to pick it up in an envelope. And what we've noticed lately is the local pickup of the money rather than dropping it off in a machine or wiring it, making it virtually impossible to trace.

But yes, this happened to friends of mine, actually. They do pick people in vulnerable moments. They have been known to scan obituaries.

And it is a world of bad out there with that. But one way to fix that or inoculate your family is, I don't know if your parents had this for you when you were a kid, they had it for me. There was a password.

If they were going to send someone to pick me up from school, there was a password, which I'm not going to say here or anywhere. And now my parents will remember that password. And so I tell them, that is your password.

And if you ever think you get a call from me, that's what the password is. If you can't call me back or reach me, don't do anything. And you have that family safe word, and that should help.

Ben Felix: That seems like the next step after the trusted contact person. And we've talked about internally doing something like that for all of our clients. Administering that is a little tricky.

We have to figure out how to do that. It's inevitable because when you can be impersonated perfectly with AI, it's just really scary.

Theresa Ebden: The thing with the trusted contact person, you self-select that. You, the investor, have the control to appoint your trusted contact person. So should your advisor or your financial provider think something may be amiss, or you at a point in time where maybe you've had an accident or some other reason for cognitive decline, if unusual activity is happening on the account, it just gives the organization the ability to call someone and say, we've noticed these things and slow it down a bit.

In a nutshell, that's oversimplifying it. But yes, it's absolutely... And we're finding that people do sign up for it when they're made aware of it.

There just needs to be more education on it, even younger people.

Ben Felix: You alluded to finfluencers earlier. Can you describe what a finfluencer is?

Theresa Ebden: In a way, you could almost say that you're a finfluencer, right? A finfluencer is not a bad thing at all. It's a good thing.

Ben Felix: I've been wondering if I was a finfluencer.

Theresa Ebden: Well, you are an influencer in the financial realm. You're an online personality who offers advice, tips, or guidance on how to manage money, invest wisely, or achieve financial goals. Finfluencers generally do fall into one of three categories.

So there are unregistered individuals, unregistered individuals hired by financial firms, and registered investment advice professionals. The latter one. While some finfluencers may offer quality advice or guidance, others may have...

You really don't know until you check it out. It's not always immediately available or available at all. But you don't know if they have a contract with the organization they're recommending or the type of investment they're recommending.

There might be questionable credentials. You don't always know what you're getting. Investors don't always trust social media financial advice.

They are more willing to trust specific finfluencers with whom they feel they've developed a trust-based relationship.

Dan Bortolotti: Let's talk a little bit about that trust because it's interesting to get a sense of just how trusting people are of advice that they're getting online from people they don't know. They don't necessarily understand their background. How seriously are retail investors taking this kind of advice that they get online?

Theresa Ebden: I would say in our research, about a third, so 35% of respondents reported making a financial decision based on advice from a finfluencer. About a quarter in experiments, 24% of those people exposed to finfluencer-style posts bought the promoted asset versus about 7% who were not exposed. We can see that there is a significant influence there. Our Behavioral Insights Team has done work to show those trends.

Ben Felix: Do we know why people are getting their financial advice from finfluencers?

Theresa Ebden: I think it's just part and parcel of the movement of the times where people get their information from the days of being on the subway and seeing everyone reading the newspaper and flipping on the news at six o'clock at night and knowing a person who could help them with that. It's changed. Our points of connection through the day are multiples of what they were before.

Popular self-reported reasons include the perceived ease of access through those multitude of connections, simplicity, it doesn't cost anything, and it is often very informative. Social media posts can often feel more concrete and emotionally engaging than traditional financial information. I think that does increase its persuasive power.

If you know anyone who's a big YouTube consumer, you can almost watch it happen. If it's on a topic that you don't care about, you can see how they dig in and they start to have their favorite people that they listen to on whatever topic it may be. The reality is, finfluencer advice is convenient and accessible and that's why people are doing it.

Ben Felix: Interesting. Is there a specific demographic group or type of person that's more likely than others to take finfluencer advice?

Theresa Ebden: We did some work on that as well. When exposed to finance-related social media content, about a fifth, 21% of investors bought the asset promoted in a post compared to 29% of non-investors. That suggests non-investors are at an elevated risk of being influenced by finfluencer content on social media.

Thinking back to that example of someone who may see an Instagram post with a politician promoting a crypto asset, maybe they've never bought an investment in their life, they are more likely to go for that scam. They are also more likely to listen to a finfluencer. Of those who have made financial decisions based on finfluencer advice, they're also more likely to have been scammed on social media to the tune of 12.2 times more likely. They are more likely to trust the financial influencers that they follow, 7.2 times more likely. They are nearly five times more likely to trade stocks or other investments frequently, several times a week. That's how we define frequently.

And they're nearly four times more likely to believe that the financial influencers they follow provide useful information. Some other interesting facts found, they are three times more willing to take moderate risks and accept some losses to potentially earn higher returns. And they're twice as likely to have experienced significant investment losses in the past.

That's a major one. They're also twice as likely to manage their investments using a self-service mobile app. And then so finally, of those who have made financial decisions based on finfluencer advice, they're also less likely to work with a financial advisor or a portfolio manager.

In fact, three times less likely. Similarly, roughly three times less likely to spend less than an hour on social media per day. There are some pretty clear divisions there.

Ben Felix: That's super interesting. Obviously, we don't tell people that they shouldn't have financial advisors. We try and be balanced, but we're a little biased.

But I know that a lot of non-registered finfluencers, I know this because I've seen some of their videos, they often create skepticism about traditional regulated financial advice. They tell their followers, you shouldn't have an advisor, you should do this thing or buy this product or whatever. It's interesting to hear that there is that relationship in the data.

Theresa Ebden: You can walk through different industries and see everything from health advice to how you organize your day and finance is no exception. The consequences, if you do fall in with a finfluencer who's not got your best interests in mind, the consequences can be quite dire.

Dan Bortolotti: How should consumers who are listening and viewing this financial content separate the good from the bad? What are some of the criteria that you can work through? Is it production quality?

Is it trying to figure out who the source is? What's some advice that you're going to offer to people to help separate the wheat from the chaff there?

Theresa Ebden: Fortunately, and that's a great question. And as you know, to become qualified to give financial advice, you actually have to do a lot of studying, a lot of credentials. And when you get those credentials, you become registered and qualified.

So going to checkbeforeyouinvest.ca, which is another service we provide, go there. And if your person's there, that means they're registered. So at least they do have the qualifications.

That's good to know. And then you also want to be digging around their site or their profile and seeing if they disclose any conflicts of interest or compensation. They may not, but that's something to look for.

And then as with anything in life, just be very cautious of highly emotional language. If they're creating a sense of urgency, promises of easy returns. These are very common persuasion techniques.

If you've ever seen the movie, The Beekeeper, there's a scene there where a woman is having her computer compromised and there's some ransomware situation and the choices are made and they're unfortunate, but the emotional language, the urgency, all of that, that's commonly used with bad advice. It's also commonly used with fraudsters. Emotional manipulation is always something to be very careful of.

Ben Felix: Something that seems kind of tricky is that we, Dan and I are registered. We have our licenses to give financial advice. And so if we said the wrong thing, there would be repercussions.

But a lot of the people who are giving maybe the type of advice that should have some oversight are not registered. It seems like it'd be tougher to enforce any regulations. What are the regulatory challenges posed by this finfluencer issue?

Theresa Ebden: It's a great question. And it's actually one that regulators around the world are looking at right now. You're right.

Finfluencers may unintentionally trigger securities law obligations. They may believe that they're just educating, but their content can still be regulated if it reasonably influences investment decisions. Sometimes finfluencers may have difficulty distinguishing general advice from registrable advice.

There is a general advice exemption from this registration requirement that many finfluencers could be relying on. Social media formats make it easy to omit or obscure disclosures that are legally required. So I guess check it out.

Check it twice. I will say that the steps that we've taken to inform consumers about these issues have been a focus lately. So the OSC, together with the Canadian Securities Administrators and CIRO, released Staff Notice 31-369, which you can look it up there if you like.

And you've probably seen it. But it explains how existing securities laws apply to finfluencers and online investing content. We made a real effort with this one.

Staff Notices generally tend to be a bit more legalistic. They are generally written by lawyers, read by lawyers, and market participants. This one in particular has been written in a way that is very plain language, very accessible.

It emphasizes that securities regulators actively monitor finfluencer activity and not financial advice. Disclaimers do not override legal obligations. We're running a nationwide social media campaign on this.

And then we'll have more coming to ensure that finfluencers and investors are well informed. There have been efforts by other regulators around the world, notably the FCA in the UK, on finfluencers as well. So this is part and parcel of sort of a larger effort.

Ben Felix: It's a tricky issue. As you've talked about, there are a ton of people who are getting advice from people who are not qualified to give it. It's scary.

Theresa Ebden: We can't just fall back on caveat emptor, buyer beware. Steps like this, this finfluencer initiative, I think really go the extra mile to make sure that it's really clear. The rules are there and there's a promotion campaign attached to it to make sure we're getting in front of the people who are providing advice online.

Because most people, I think, they want to follow the rules. Generally speaking, most people do. Of course, there are those who don't, but it's just about making sure people also understand that when you go online and you start providing advice, these are the guidelines.

Ben Felix: It's especially like some of the data you shared on who is more likely to take the finfluencer advice. They're unsophisticated investors. The buyer beware, like you said, just doesn't really work.

Theresa Ebden: I think we have a greater duty of care than to say that.

Ben Felix: I talked about my AI impersonation experience. Can you talk about how else you guys are seeing AI being used to perpetrate investor scams?

Theresa Ebden: When it comes to AI, we've talked about the deepfakes. I actually do want to just speak a little bit about what can be done to help as well. We did dig into the different types of scams.

But the thing I want to say is we have a fraudulent web removal service. It's called the Takedown Service. The CSA has been actively working with a third-party service provider to remove fraudulent investment platforms and cryptocurrency scam websites.

Between June 5th and November 23rd, they deactivated nearly 4,000 to 3,900 fake investment platforms and cryptocurrency scam websites. I just wanted to sort of flag that as a bright spot; work is being done in this area. When it comes to the different types of scams that are out there, we've talked about being skeptical of urgency and hype.

But you'll see unsolicited offers. You'll see all the hallmarks of traditional fraud, guaranteed returns, exclusive AI-based opportunities. These are all warning signs.

It really is turbocharging those traditional scams, as I said. What I'd like to make sure we talk about is AI as a magnifying glass. AI-enhanced scams take the traditional scam world and just magnify this for investors.

It's a much riskier place than it used to be. One study we did, participants invested 22% more in AI-enhanced scams than in conventional scams. AI often removes common red flags like poor grammar, inconsistent formatting, making scams appear more legitimate and professional.

They have, as I mentioned, that greater scale and reach. Fraudsters can target more investors more quickly, build lists, build leads, and they become more widespread. There's different types of scams, but this is also the way that the technology is used to reach the investors as well.

Dan Bortolotti: So that sort of leads to the question of how we can mitigate it. Is the solution a technological one or is it just more about raising awareness? Is there anything that people can do to protect themselves beyond simply the typical advice of just learn what the warning signs are and be skeptical?

There must be something else that we can do to push back.

Theresa Ebden: There is. There are system level mitigations. You can get tools such as browser plugins or platform level warnings.

They flag suspicious investment contacts. They can materially reduce scam investments up to 31% in some experiments. There are just-in-time messaging mitigations.

So these would be prominent alerts that highlight the scam risk at the point of decision, can reduce impulsive investing and fraudulent opportunities. And then when it comes to persuasive techniques, exposing investors in advance to examples of AI scams and explaining common tactics does reduce susceptibility to fraud. We know this.

And so the idea is we call it inoculation. Education is inoculation. Other things investors can do to protect themselves.

I mentioned being very skeptical in the journalism world. It's where I started a long time ago in financial journalism. We have a saying, if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

So you really have to be very skeptical of any offer that comes your way. Any advisor or financial professional to reward your time is going to work hard to make sure that you feel you're making the right decision. And it's okay to ask questions and kick the tires, ask them what their credentials are, and be very suspicious of unsolicited offers.

If you don't know this person very well, and suddenly they're coming to you with an investment opportunity, they have a great lifestyle and you're hoping you can have a piece of that too. That's a huge sign. Anything with guaranteed returns, unless it's a GIC, is pretty much a big red flag as well.

And then we talked about exclusive AI-based opportunities. That's a common theme. The verification before investing.

So independently confirming the legitimacy of the investment, the promoter, and any claimed endorsements using trusted sources. Get a notebook, write it down, or put it in your OneNote in your computer, get all the details and check it out. And then when you have all of that information, you need to go get some second opinions.

The reality is we spend way more time choosing a fridge or a washing machine than we do checking out and getting second opinions on investing. Many of us, and I think it shouldn't be that way. These are major decisions.

Taking time and consulting registered professionals, your trusted friends and family, and regulator-backed resources really does reduce the likelihood of falling victim to a scam. And then finally, of course, to come full circle, GetSmarterAboutMoney. We have a whole section on frauds and scams.

And the more education you have, the better you'll be able to spot and prevent the fraud.

Ben Felix: Yeah, that's awesome. I love the inoculation point. I did a video last year because I was noticing every time I would post a video, there'd be all these bots in the comment sections.

And they would be having these conversations with themselves, promoting a specific name, always a full three-name name, first, middle, and last name. And there'd be no link. But if you searched that name, it would take you to a fake landing page.

It was clearly a scam. And so I clicked through and had my OPSEC set up pretty well to protect myself. But I communicated with the scammer to just see what would happen and then made a video about it to try and show my viewers, like, hey, if you're seeing these, this is what they're trying to do for that inoculation reason.

But that stopped. And now it's the AI thing. So they move so fast. I think the inoculation can just be tricky.

Theresa Ebden: They move fast. And also, one thing we haven't really dug in on is the relationship investment scam, sometimes called long-haul scams, and sometimes very uncharitably called pig-butchering scams. This is when you have a person who's approached you and over time become your friend, who you may or may not meet.

They're getting close to you. And suddenly, in comes the ask for you to join an investment club or, hey, I've been doing some crypto investing, and it worked out really well for me. And maybe it starts with 100 bucks, and it kind of goes and goes and goes.

This can happen to anyone. And there is a loneliness epidemic out there. We have our phones.

We're all connected. But real human contact, particularly those who are more vulnerable and isolated, they do tend to be more prone to the relationship investment scam. And they're insidious.

I watched a presentation by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance recent IOSCO meeting, and they took us behind the dashboard of how these scam farms operate, which in and of themselves are terrible operations, often powered by trafficked individuals. And you have your dashboard. And if you've ever gotten a text from someone named Vu, this was the example they gave, sort of a scam that was happening for a while.

And this person had a dashboard of 20 to 30 of different pings. And then most people don't respond, but some do. And when they respond, it's figuring out what to say back to them, using the AI translator, and then getting them to a point where you pass on to the next room, which is the person who's dedicated to talking to that person over time, building the relationship, then to the voice team, then into the mode where you're working on the investing, sort of ask.

And then of course, at the very end, there's the recovery room scheme, which happens frequently. And then the final phase is they completely disappear from your life. It is happening at an alarming rate.

It is not unique to Ontario or Canada, or even North America. These are happening globally. But the relationship investment scam is a particularly insidious one.

Something to just be aware of. Money is emotional. And if you've ever tried to talk someone out of a situation that's maybe not good for them emotionally, this can be one of them too.

And we have resources on GetSmarterAboutMoney about this, how to handle it if you've been the victim of fraud. And there are resources available because it is an extremely emotional moment when a person realizes that they have fallen victim to a scam. And unfortunately, we handle that on a daily basis with our Contact Center.

Dan Bortolotti: It's one of the most upsetting ones. On some level, some investment scams, I think there's a tendency to feel a little bit like somebody promised you a guaranteed 20% return and you jumped at it. Maybe you're just being greedy and maybe a little bit foolish.

The relationship one is really preying on a person's emotional vulnerability. It's not about greed. It's not about investment returns.

It's just about a need for something very fundamentally human. Somebody just heartlessly taking advantage of it. That one really, I think, is upsetting to have to witness.

And some of the stories that we've read about people who have fallen victim to that are really depressing. And anything that can be done to mitigate those is obviously hugely important.

Theresa Ebden: I think education, discussing it on major podcasts like this one, this is where it makes a difference is the awareness campaigns, getting out there, talking about it, and also making it okay to talk about money. In one OSC in the community event that I was at, I was speaking to a woman in her 90s and she thanked us for coming in. And she absorbed the whole presentation.

She has some questions related to her own personal investment matters, which we referred to the Contact Center because they were getting quite detailed and she needed some advice there. But she did say to me, you know, we just never learned this at school. We didn't talk about money growing up.

And many households, that is the case. But it is important too. And I would say for those of you who have children, talk to them about money early on.

We're finding younger people getting into the idea of investing, maybe even treating it like a game. It's important to have the money conversations, blunt ones early.

Ben Felix: I definitely try to do that with my kids. They're pretty engaged about it. They know what I do for a living.

They know that I make YouTube videos about finance that a lot of people watch. They'll probe and ask questions and they're pretty curious. They're not like super excited or passionate about it, but they'll say, so what was your podcast about today? And I'll tell them like, oh, cool. My oldest is 11.

Theresa Ebden: That's on YouTube. That's already your tool, right? Yeah.

Ben Felix: So we've been talking about overt illegal scams. Something else that can be insidious, but it's not illegal, I don't think, is gamification, as you mentioned earlier, where sometimes these apps are influencing the ways that people behave in a way that's probably not leading to good investor behavior, but is leading to behavior that's profitable for the company that created the app. Can you talk about how gamification in investing apps might be affecting retail investor behavior?

Theresa Ebden: It's a great topic and it's one that the OSC has done a lot of research on. We're very grateful to our Thought Leadership Group and Behavioral Insights Group and they've taken, rightfully so, a good focus on this and working with best practices globally on this. Gamification and digital engagement practices more broadly can influence investor behavior in positive and negative ways.

So it's not inherently good or bad. The existing research that our teams did found some negative effects on investor behavior, including increased trading frequency, which is associated with lower returns and what we call a herding effect in which investors gravitate towards securities promoted via gamification techniques. While gamification techniques can make investing platforms more engaging, there is concern, and rightfully so, with associated evidence surrounding that downstream impact on investor outcomes.

Dan Bortolotti: What are some of the mitigation techniques then that can be used to reduce the negative effects? They might not all be negative, but obviously we want to shift it in the positive direction.

Theresa Ebden: Mitigations can be deployed at the individual level. So there are things you can do yourself if you're trying out these platforms as opposed to systemically to increase the likelihood of investors changing their behavior. So broadly speaking, mitigations can be used either before an investor encounters gamification techniques or during their encounter with gamification.

While research in the investing domain is limited, several techniques that our teams recommend could hold promise in protecting investors from gamification. So those include requiring users to opt in to being exposed to gamification on investing platforms rather than being automatically opted in, and then within platforms, disclosures or labels drawing users' attention to some of the risks associated with gamification techniques, and then creating positive frictions within apps, so confirmation screens to encourage more deliberation among users. Those are some of the different mitigation techniques that can help reduce the negative effects of gamification.

Ben Felix: Can you talk about how the Get Smarter About Trading simulator works?

Theresa Ebden: Yes, absolutely. Have you tried it yet?

Ben Felix: I did play with it, yeah.

Theresa Ebden: It's a fun tool we created. So you get $10,000 in obviously not real funds, and you invest in a list of stocks. And we use a few gamification techniques throughout the simulator.

So you get into a simulator, it just basically helps people understand how the gamification techniques may be influencing their trading behavior and help investors make more informed decisions. You log in, you see your wallet, your available funds, you're given a list of limited information. It's not the Bloomberg Terminal by any means.

You've got these fictitious stocks with a bit of share history, they've been up or down, and then you go through eight days. Once you've set your book, you move forward, and then you go day by day, do you want to make any changes? I picked everything on day one and went through the first time and just didn't change a thing, and ended up slightly down.

Eight days is actually not a very long time, and you get charged every time you trade, but then they would give you points. So for those people who would make decisions every single day, and would be looking at the points they're getting, which of course don't have a financial value, but their amount is going down, it would be a learning opportunity. But of course, as you're going through the tool, we're collecting the user behaviors, and it's an interesting way to see how people may behave in those situations.

It just highlights the specific gamification techniques used, and it just helps you appreciate those subtle but powerful ways that they may try to draw you in.

Dan Bortolotti: I'm just wondering how gamification can be used to improve investor outcomes, because certainly there's going to be some negative effects associated with it, but there's probably some positive ones as well.

Theresa Ebden: I think that we have a pretty good stat there, a 3.5 to 4.5% increase in diversification when positive gamification techniques were used in our most recent research and experimentations, generally showing that gamification can improve investor outcomes through increases in portfolio diversification. So beyond diversification, gamification can be deployed by platforms to encourage a range of positive investor behaviors, including reaching savings goals and appropriate levels of risk-taking. And the examples that could be used to achieve these outcomes include feedback, goal and progress framing, rewards, and social interactions.

Dan Bortolotti: So let's just wrap up with a few final questions. Which of the OSC priorities or initiatives that you're working on now are you most excited about for the future?

Theresa Ebden: I'll be honest, when I came on, it was just over a year ago, leading into starting here, it was the entire strategic plan I was attracted to. It was beautifully laid out, it all made sense, all the pieces of the organization working together, and I found that very attractive for someone coming in and wanting to have this challenge, really apply the MBA, really get into an organization and help drive a very clearly laid out strategy. There are six goals in this strategy.

Goal two, enhance the experience of the individual investor. That is the one that I live every day. All of them matter, but that is the one that I work on most closely in the Investor Office.

Ben Felix: It's really cool. I mean, it's incredible for people in Ontario, but really anybody, because anybody can access the resources the OSC is creating. It's an incredible resource. What a service you guys are providing to the public.

Theresa Ebden: Thanks very much. Really, it comes down to ensuring that investors are positioned to make better life cycle investment decisions, whether it's having that investor redress system in place that we talked about, how we can help reduce investor harm through education, inoculation, making sure that investors and advisors have a better understanding of financial and securities markets. One thing to watch, we're launching our fraud prevention month campaign soon.

Be sure to visit GetSmarterAboutMoney and follow our social media channels. We're hoping that really helps get the word out as well.

Ben Felix: We'll link to those resources in the episode show notes so people can check it out. It's such a good website. The reason that I always link to it is because it's great content, but it's from a neutral source.

There's no conflict of interest where like, oh, are they doing this because they're trying to sell me a product. Between the content being good, it's really good quality and the fact that it's so obviously unbiased, it's such a useful resource.

Theresa Ebden: Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, it's a really dedicated group of individuals there. I'll definitely pass that compliment on to them. It's something that everyone's very passionate about over here.

Ben Felix: You can tell it comes out through the content.

Theresa Ebden: Thank you.

Ben Felix: Final question for you, Theresa, how do you define success in your life?

Theresa Ebden: I am a big believer in defining your purpose. I teach a class on developing your leadership purpose at Ivy. I regularly come in and do that and listening to people develop their purpose through the challenge, action, and result they want to drive in their lives.

It has a way of helping me also think about what I want to do and coming back to my purpose, and then living that purpose, making sure that we have the courage to go out and do the big, bold things that we need to do to go out there. Mine is about driving change through innovation and bringing different groups together to find that common ground and move forward. I think that it comes down to courage to change and making sure that you're always prioritizing the collaboration.

You know that saying that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. I would say that if I've gone far and perhaps a bit fast with others, then that is true success in life.

Ben Felix: It's a great answer and you have clearly thought about it.

Theresa Ebden: Thank you. And that, of course, in my case.

Ben Felix: Of course. All right. This has been a great conversation, Theresa. We really appreciate you coming on the podcast.

Theresa Ebden: Yeah, I really enjoyed it and all the best and thanks very much for having me.

Ben Felix: Thanks so much.

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