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Shruti Agarwal and Ankita Singhania of CAGRfunds, Mumbai have won the prestigious Sanjeevani Award under category ‘Shakti’ for bringing in more women clients to the MF fold.
There are many reports that say that over 90% of women involve their spouse or father to make financial decisions. Ankit and Shruti sensed an opportunity and started women dedicated knowledge sessions to make them financially independent.
In these sessions, they guide women on how they can take charge of their finances and become financially independent. They have also curated a dedicated financial education course for women. They work with many women centric organizations and clubs who help them to get in touch with working women. Thanks to their persistent efforts, close to 60% of their total clients are women.
Ankita and Shruti started their distribution journey in 2015. By 2019, they observed that they have many women clients but their finances were handled by their spouses or fathers.
Shruti said, “As per a media report 92% women admit that their husband or father deal with their investments and they do not take financial decision independently. We sensed an opportunity here and decided to make women financial independent by conducting awareness programs.”
To start with, they reached out to women through women oriented associations, clubs and women employees working in corporates. Shruti also conducts regular webinars for women.
Post these sessions, they stay in touch with all women participants through WhatsApp and regularly share case studies of women who have achieved financial goals through mutual funds.
Of late, Shruti has curated a course to increase financial knowledge of women. She said, “These courses were curated based on the feedback we received from the women investors.”
Also, Shruti started her podcast series of 20 episodes in which she interviewed a few women investors who talked about their fears and challenges in the personal finance journey and how they managed to overcome them.
Thanks to all these efforts, now 56% of their total clients are women. They have over 1000 active clients with AUM of Rs.140 crore.
Sharing her learnings, Shruti said that that MFDs should let women clients ask questions. She said, “Most women feel embarrassed to ask basic questions about finances. MFDs should make them comfortable and encourage them to ask more questions.”