In this concluding part of the Q & A, Aditi Kothari,
EVP, DSP Black Rock Investment Managers shares the activities undertakenby her
team to educate women in rural towns.
Apart from educating women, what other activities have you undertaken under your investor education drive?
We have organized a series of financial literacy campaigns in North India in collaboration with Sanchayan Society - a Delhi based NGO for underprivileged rural women. Sanchayan is a social organization dedicated exclusively to financial literacy for the youth & adults.
These workshops spread awareness on concepts like inflation, investments, bank account savings and most importantly women empowerment. They made women aware of concepts like NPS, recurring deposits, FDs and life insurance among others. These programs were held in the local dialect and have been received very well. Approximately 10 workshops have been conducted and close to 500 women have been part of these programs.
In your opinion, how are their (women) concerns different when it comes to making investment decisions?
Women are different from men in terms of their aspirations, priorities in life, lifestyle commitments & more importantly their financial planning needs.
A woman’s expense priorities are rather different than that of a man’s, especially her husband’s. For example, an affluent woman may want to spend on jewelry or designer bags but not on upgrading the car! It’s that simple. An adult woman should be able to spend on whatever she wants even if she is not earning money. That is where investments can play an important part. Women today inherit money, they have savings from past jobs or they are given some money in their trousseau. If they educated themselves a little more about investing and were in touch themselves (independent of their spouses) with a financial advisor they would be confident in making their financial decisions and would not feel dependent on or obligated to their partners or family members. They would be able to generate some income from their ‘corpuses’ (inheritance, past savings or trousseau money) and be well on their way to financial independence! I do believe a lot of marital stress can be alleviated if all women took charge of their own finances.
In other cases, women may also have to deal with unexpected and unfortunate events such as divorce and widowhood. Both these circumstances leave women with sizable investable corpuses (in the form of alimony, inheritances or life insurance claims). Investment oblivion can lead to mistakes with long-lasting and devastating consequences.
The mutual fund industry does not track investors based on gender currently. Any rough idea on how many women investors would be primary account holders in mutual funds?
Our operational process does not currently record applications on gender profile.
Tell us about your new campaign - Sheconomy. How long did this campaign continue?
Sheconomy (http://www.dspblackrock.com/winvestor/Sheconomy.aspx) was a TV initiative under our Winvestor program in association with a leading business channel. The objective was to guide the new age independent women adopt wealth creation strategies by answering their queries on personal finance to help them become better informed investors.
Experts featured on Sheconomy included investment advisors, financial advisors and wealth managers like SujataKabraji, MassaratFakih, Shiney Sebastian, RoopaVenkatakrishnan, KiranTelang, YogitaDand, Jigisha Shah, NilakshiLouzado, SapnaNarang, NisreenMamaji, Vinita Bahri, NehaKhemlani, Mimi ParthaSarathy and HarshvardhanRoongta.
The show launched on 12th Jan 2013 with a panel discussion featuring reputed divorce Lawyer - MrunaliniDeshmukh and SadiaRaval, Chief Psychologist, Inner Space who passionately believe that women must take care of their own finances. This was followed by seven episodes with various clusters of women such as homemakers, women entrepreneurs, working women, young mothers, senior citizens, fresh graduates and even a special episode with men and women talking to our Winvisors who answer queries and provide investment advice. The last episode was a panel discussion where NainaBachchan, Vice President, Wealth & Investment Management, Barclays, fashion designer and politician Shaina NC, Cindy Golub, the Founder of G-Squared Advisory LLC and I shared our views and experiences about various issues and aspects of why we felt women need to be in charge of their own financial future. We are looking to take Sheconomy forward and would be exploring various facets of the theme in the future.
How has been the response to your investor awareness drive- ‘Financial Planning Clinics’? Are these Financial Planning Clinics held only in Mumbai?
The response has been very encouraging. We have received very good feedback about how the program has enabled many Winvestors to be more confident and pro-active about investing and investments.
When we started ‘Winvestor’, we had offered the ‘Financial Planning Clinics’ only in Mumbai. The response was good, but it faced practical limitations like the clinics taking place on a working day, working hours and traveling to our offices to attend the complimentary counseling clinics. We are now offering these clinics at an all-India level to expand our reach to women. We also go directly to corporates to conduct sessions with women employees. Winvestors can also directly contact our Winvisors by accessing their details on our website or we can help them schedule an appointment, at their convenience, with a Winvisor in their area.
This is the concluding part of the interview.
