How to Find and Vet Finance and B2B Creators: A Fit Scorecard

By Yamm Labs · Updated October 2026 · 13 min read

The shortlist arrives on a Monday: twelve creators, each with a follower count, an engagement rate and a rate card. Nothing on it says whether a creator is registered with SEBI, whether their last ten paid posts carried a label, or whether a compliance reviewer has ever read their scripts. A bank or fund house can sign every name on that sheet and still not know which of them it is allowed to work with. That missing column is what a creator vetting checklist fills.

What does a creator vetting checklist cover, and who owns it?

A creator vetting checklist covers four things: whether the creator reaches your buyer, whether they can legally say what you need said, whether they disclose paid work properly, and whether they will accept your approval and contract terms. Reach and cost come after those four. A creator who fails on standing or disclosure is expensive at any rate.

A creator, in this piece, is anyone paid in money, product or access to publish about your brand: a YouTube personal finance explainer, a chief financial officer who posts on LinkedIn, a podcast host, a newsletter writer or your own employee. A finfluencer is a creator whose content is about money, investing or financial products. The checklist applies to both, with extra rows for finfluencers.

Ownership splits three ways. The brand or social media lead runs the checklist and keeps the file. The compliance team answers the regulatory rows and signs off scripts. Legal or procurement owns the contract rows. If one person ticks every row, the checks on standing usually get the least attention, because they are the hardest to evidence. For how vetting fits into a full programme with briefs, budgets and measurement, see our influencer marketing page.

Where do you find finance and B2B creators worth vetting?

The best finance and B2B creators are usually found by reading what your buyers already read, not by filtering a database on follower count. Start with a long list built from several places, then let creator vetting cut it down.

• Your buyers’ feeds. Ask five customers or sales prospects which people they follow on LinkedIn, YouTube or podcasts for work. Names that come up twice go on the list.
• The comment sections. Read the comments under posts on your topic. A creator whose commenters are treasury heads, founders or relationship managers reaches a B2B buyer; one whose commenters are other creators reaches other creators.
• Conference speaker lists. Fintech, banking and industry events publish speakers who already explain the category in public. Many post regularly and have never been paid by a brand.
• Your own people. Product heads, economists and relationship managers who post can be strong creators for a B2B brand. They need the same checks and an employee disclosure.
• Newsletters and podcasts. Niche finance newsletters and business podcasts often have small, specific audiences. Ask for subscriber or listener data by role or city before you assume fit.
• Agency and platform rosters. Useful for speed, but compare them with your own list. A roster shows who is available, which is a different question from who your buyer trusts.

Keep the long list wide and the shortlist short. The checklist works best when you run it on every name, including the obvious ones, because the most popular finance creators are often the ones giving the most direct advice.

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The creator vetting checklist: 14 yes/no checks before you sign

Answer each item yes or no. A yes counts only when the evidence in the last column is saved in the creator’s file with a date. Items marked as a gate stop the process on a single no. Regulatory rows are general guidance, not legal advice; your compliance team decides how each applies to your licence.

The table is deliberately plain. Every row is a question with a yes or a no, a named owner and a file you can show someone six months later. If your team adds rows, keep that shape.

Which disclosure and contract decisions does the brand have to make?

Three decisions sit with the brand, not the creator: where the paid label goes and how it reads, what an unregistered finfluencer may and may not say for a SEBI-regulated firm, and who signs off the script. Make all three before the brief goes out. This is general guidance, not legal advice; your compliance team decides.

Decision one: the label. ASCI’s influencer guidelines require the disclosure to be upfront and prominent: visible outside the bio, not hidden behind a “more” click and not buried among hashtags. Accepted labels include Advertisement, Ad, Sponsored, Collaboration, Partnership and Employee. On video, ASCI sets a minimum time on screen: for videos of 15 seconds or less, at least three seconds; for videos longer than 15 seconds and under two minutes, a third of the length. A 30-second reel therefore needs the label up for at least ten seconds. Read the ASCI influencer guidelines in full before you write the brief.

If the post will also reach audiences in the US, the FTC’s guidance for influencers asks for the disclosure in the video itself as well as the description, in simple words such as “ad” or “sponsored”. The FTC’s Disclosures 101 page names “collab” as too vague. ASCI accepts Collaboration, so a creator who posts for both audiences should use “Ad” or “Paid partnership with Brand X”, which reads clearly under both. Decide that wording once and put it in the contract.

Decision two: what an unregistered finfluencer may do. Under SEBI’s rules on association with unregistered persons, a firm SEBI regulates, such as an asset management company (AMC) or a stockbroker, and its agents may not associate directly or indirectly with a person who gives securities advice or recommendations without registration, or who makes claims about returns or performance without permission.

SEBI’s January 2025 clarification confirmed that regulated firms can still work with such creators for branding and marketing, and with people engaged only in investor education, on the same condition. In practice the brief for an unregistered creator explains a concept, such as how a systematic investment plan works, and never names a scheme’s returns, says “buy” or ranks funds.

Decision three: who signs off. Your compliance team approves the idea, the script and the final cut. For an AMC, SEBI’s master circular for mutual funds expects the AMC to define who reviews marketing material, including digital advertising, before use. For insurance, IRDAI’s 2024 policyholder protection regulations require ads issued through a distribution channel to carry the insurer’s written approval before issue, so a creator who is also a registered agent or part of a web aggregator’s channel needs that approval in writing.

ASCI places responsibility for disclosure on both the advertiser and the creator, so the brand cannot hand this decision to the creator. Our influencer marketing playbook for financial services covers brief templates and approval timelines.

How do you score the creator vetting checklist?

Score it with two rules. Any no on a gate row (items 4, 5, 6, 7 and 11) stops the process until it is fixed or the creator is dropped. Among the other nine rows, three or more no answers means stop and fix before you brief; one or two means proceed, with each fix written into the contract.

A gate is a row where a no exposes the brand to a regulator or to a disclosure complaint. The other rows affect value: fit, data, exclusivity. A creator can be a weak fit and still be safe, so value rows get a tolerance and gate rows do not.

Take a hypothetical AMC with three shortlisted creators. Creator A answers yes on all 14 rows. Creator B answers no on rows 3 and 13: a newer voice on mutual funds, and unwilling to share analytics. Two value-row no answers means B goes ahead, with an analytics clause added and a smaller first deal. Creator C has the largest following of the three, is not SEBI-registered, and has past videos quoting a fund’s one-year return. That is a no on gate 4 and a no on row 8. C stops, however large the reach.

The lesson from the example is that the score sorts creators by risk first and value second. A team that sorts by follower count first would have briefed C. Write the score in the file with the date and the names of the people who answered each row, so the decision can be explained later.

A creator you cannot evidence is a creator you cannot defend.

How do you adapt the checklist for B2B, insurance, lending and Gulf markets?

Keep the 14 rows and change what counts as evidence. Each segment and market moves the weight to different rows, and a few add one.

B2B fintech and payments. Your buyer is a buying committee: a finance head, a technology lead and procurement. Row 1 should ask whether the creator reaches the person who signs as well as the person who evaluates. Many B2B creators are employed elsewhere, so add a row: has the creator’s employer policy on paid posts been checked? For your own staff, the label is Employee under ASCI, and the FTC says listing the employer on a profile is not enough for US audiences. Our piece on B2B fintech positioning for the CFO explains why that distinction changes the message.

Insurers. Row 5 does most of the work. ASCI’s April 2025 update separated generic promotion and public-service messages from technical information or advice: a creator reminding followers to book an annual health check-up does not need an insurance qualification, while one explaining which policy suits a family does. Write the line between the two into the brief. If the creator is part of a distribution channel, IRDAI’s written-approval rule from decision three applies.

Lenders and NBFCs. Add a check to row 8: does the creator quote rates? RBI requires lenders to give retail and MSME term-loan borrowers a Key Facts Statement in a standard format, including the annual percentage rate, before the loan contract is signed. A creator quoting a headline rate that differs from that statement creates a mismatch your customer will notice. Keep rate talk out of the script, or take the figure from the statement.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia. Add a licence row for each Gulf market. The National Media Authority, which took over the work of the UAE Media Council, runs an Advertiser Permit for anyone who posts paid or unpaid advertising on social media. The UAE’s securities regulator (then the Securities and Commodities Authority, now the Capital Market Authority) introduced a separate licence in 2025 for people who publish financial content or recommendations, according to law-firm summaries of the resolution, so a finance creator may need both.

In Saudi Arabia, creators who earn from social media advertising need a Mawthooq licence from the media regulator, as reported by Arab News. Free-zone firms in the DIFC or ADGM answer to their own regulators as well. Ask the creator for each licence and verify it with the issuer; regulator names and rules in the Gulf have changed recently, so check the current position each time.

What should you do when a creator fails an item?

A failed item has three possible outcomes: fix it and re-check, narrow the brief so the item no longer applies, or drop the creator. Decide which one within the same week, write it down, and do not brief until the row reads yes.

1. Fix and re-check. Value rows and some gates can be fixed. A creator with a weak labelling history (row 6) can agree the label in writing, submit the first post for review and be checked again after it goes live. An analytics gap (row 13) is fixed with a contract clause.
2. Narrow the brief. A creator who is not SEBI-registered can still be briefed for investor education and brand awareness, with no scheme returns, no recommendations and no rankings. That changes a no on row 4 into a yes, provided compliance signs the narrowed brief.
3. Drop. Past regulator action, a pattern of guaranteed-return claims, or a refusal to accept pre-approval are not fixable by contract. Record the reason in one line so the name does not return on next quarter’s shortlist.

Whichever route you take, keep the failed row and its outcome in the creator vetting file. A clean file shows a reviewer that a problem was found and handled, which is a stronger record than a file where every row says yes.

What should you tell your compliance team before the first post?

Send compliance one short note per creator before anyone films. Name the creator and their registration or qualification status, with the evidence attached. State what the content will claim and what it will not, the exact disclosure label with its position and time on screen, who approved the script, and where the approval record is kept. Add the takedown contact and the response time from the contract.

That note is also the summary of the creator vetting file. If compliance can approve from the note alone, the checklist did its job. If they have to ask for evidence, a row was ticked without it. This is general guidance, not legal advice; your compliance team decides.

People also ask

How do you find B2B influencers for a finance brand?

Start with your buyers: ask customers whom they follow for work, read the comments under posts on your topic, and check conference speaker lists and your own staff. Build a long list from those places, then run every name through a vetting checklist that covers fit, regulatory standing, disclosure history and contract terms.

Can an AMC or broker pay an unregistered finfluencer?

Under SEBI’s rules, a regulated firm may not associate with an unregistered person who gives securities advice or makes return or performance claims. It can still work with such a creator for branding, marketing or investor education, provided the content has no advice, recommendations or return claims. Check the brief with your compliance team.

What disclosure label should a paid finance creator use in India?

ASCI’s influencer guidelines accept labels such as Ad, Sponsored, Collaboration, Partnership and Employee, placed upfront and not hidden in hashtags or a bio. If the post also reaches US audiences, “Ad” or “Paid partnership” works under both ASCI and the FTC’s guidance.

Who should own creator vetting at a bank or insurer?

The brand or social media lead should run the checklist and keep the file. Compliance owns the registration, qualification and disclosure rows and signs off scripts, and legal owns the contract terms. Split ownership this way so no single person ticks the hardest rows alone.