Opinion Leaders in Finance

Financial Opinion Leaders in Ghana  were defined as those who said that other people come to them “very often” for opinions and advice about finance/money issues.

Only 5 percent of all respondents said other people come to them very often for opinions and advice about financial issues. These self-identified opinion leaders are heavily male and relatively high on the income and educations scales. Urban opinion leaders were mostly young, while in rural areas, a significant minority was over 60, as they were among health opinion leaders (Table 1).

Table 1
        

Finance opinion leaders have more self-professed access to financial services than the rest of the population, and opinion leaders also use such services more heavily (Table 2). This means Ghanaians may be seeking out those with greater financial services experience for opinions and advice.

Table 2
     

In addition to greater average experience with financial services, opinion leaders also reported more frequent use of almost every general information source included in the survey (Chart 1). However, even though they themselves were sources of information within their communities, opinion leaders did not say that they use friends and family as a source of news and information to the same extent that other respondents did.

Chart 1
     

The opinion leaders were no more likely than other respondents to use new technologies—the internet or SMS—as news sources. However, as those two sources do not seem to be typically used for financial information by anyone, heavier use might not be seen as an advantage in understanding financial issues.

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