(Oct 20): At a meeting on Sunday afternoon involving officials from Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority and the country’s stock exchange, some attendees were surprised to see several prominent Instagrammers present.

The gathering was to discuss MSCI Inc’s shock threat to relegate the nation to standalone status, a move that would force funds tracking its emerging-market benchmarks to sell Indonesian stocks, triggering potentially billions of dollars in capital outflows.

As well as what could be done to fix the situation, a significant portion of the conversation centred around how influencers like Rivan Kurniawan could help manage the message and provide feedback from retail investors, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The chairwoman of the Financial Services Authority, Friderica Widyasari Dewi, is a believer in the power of online personalities in a stock market dominated by millions of retail investors, one of the people said, noting that they’re seen as KOLs, or key opinion leaders.

But to some, the amount of time spent on social media strategy at a juncture when authorities urgently need to restore the confidence of institutional money managers was jarring, the people said, asking not to be identified disclosing the substance of talks that were private.

Representatives from the Financial Services Authority didn’t respond to a request for comment. Kurniawan, who has written several books on investing, said he attended the meeting in his capacity as an investor and licensed investment adviser.

Regulators “wanted to hear perspectives, input, ideas and constructive criticism from different points of view regarding MSCI’s announcement”, he said. “I conveyed complaints, feedback and market reactions from retail investors. I also personally provided several suggestions.”

Other influencers present included Aline Wiratmaja, a former TV news anchor, Andhika Diskartes, a former government finance official turned financial educator, and Leon Hartono. Wiratmaja and Diskartes declined to comment while Hartono didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hartono is one of Indonesia’s most prominent finance influencers with a YouTube channel of around 833,000 subscribers. He recently uploaded a video discussing the threat of an MSCI reclassification, arguing that the consequences could extend beyond the stock market and affect investment in Indonesia’s real economy.

While communicating to retail investors is important in a nation where more than 10 million people have stock trading accounts and much of the population gets information via social media, several professional investors at Sunday’s meeting left feeling less confident that regulators and the exchange have a sufficiently focused strategy to avert a downgrade to standalone status, the people said.

There was also a feeling that regulators, who treat financial influencers as a two-way bridge to Indonesia’s fast-growing retail-investor base, shouldn’t necessarily be seeking their views on what’s driving anxiety among individual investors, the people said.

The divide underscores the challenge for Indonesian authorities — convincing global investors that longstanding concerns over ownership transparency, coordinated trading and enforcement are being addressed while keeping millions of retail investors confident in a market that has drawn them in at record pace.

“Financial influencers play a big part in the stock market,” Joseph Gabetua, a 32-year-old retail investor in Bandung in West Java, said. “Some parts that regulators can’t explain, financial influencers help retail investors understand.” Right now, the Financial Services Authority understands that “finfluencers can be their partner to communicate to the public”.

Another retail investor, 26-year-old Felicia Kurniawan from Surabaya in East Java, said with the Indonesian economy not in great shape, “people believe through investing they might get the chance to get rich quick”.

“Most of the new investors are active on social media, but a lot of them may not understand how to invest properly. So they just follow the financial influencers,” she said. “But if there is misinformation, it can easily spread as well.”

On Tuesday, stocks rebounded from their worst rout in nearly four decades. The benchmark Jakarta Composite Index clawed back some of a roughly 15% two-day plunge that was its steepest since 1989 and cemented the country’s position as the world’s worst-performing stock market.

On Monday evening, following talks with MSCI officials earlier that day, Jeffrey Hendrik, chief executive of the Indonesia Stock Exchange, said stocks with concentrated ownership would be removed from its benchmark equities index in an effort to create a “more credible and integrity-driven price index”.

He also said that alongside the bourse’s move earlier this year to publish the names of investors owning at least 1% of a company’s shares, the exchange will indicate whether each holder is affiliated with the company.

Indonesia now has until the end of April, when MSCI’s consultation closes, to demonstrate any changes it makes are indeed producing sustained improvements before a final decision from MSCI by June 30.

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