BONUS | Asha Merugu - Gender Parity in Finance

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA’s podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm pleased to bring you another bonus episode for my co-host Rouba Zeidan. For this conversation, Rouba talks with Asha Merugu, senior manager at EY. Asha explains her career journey in the finance industry and shares her perspective on how gender parody is being driven in many private and government sectors in India. Let's head over and take a listen to the full conversation now.

Rouba: (00:38)
So according to the Global Findex database released by the World Bank, roughly one out of two bank accounts in India remain inactive, which is about twice the average of other developing economies. What is the worst, you know, is notable in terms of the gender gap when it comes to this amount? So for example, 54% of women account holders report not actually using their accounts as opposed to 43% of male holders. Do you think that there's a need for financial education amongst women in order to render the more financially savvy?

Asha: (01:18)
No, it's a great question. Obviously, yes, right. So there has to be a financial education amongst women. There is no secondary view about it, but if you look at like in today's era, what is very important, is it just not awomen, like, even men need financial education, but of course they are considering, you know, I have gone in a very small region India and you know, so my mother is a working professional. She was, she is a doctor, and then I have seen as a kid, how challenging it is for working mothers to manage a finance and a home and a work. So finance was always in the hands of the father, right? Like the major decisions were made by fathers and anything to do with the major investments in India is always made by of, you know, father of the family. So that's how the most Indian families, which are traditionally like, you know, middle class and maybe a little bit higher upper middle class families would do except for some exceptions. But, but I agree with you, I think considering the way, you know, the India is going on. Oh, you're right. Like most of the wommen in India does not have active bank accounts. You know there could be majority of the reasons, like, for example, if you take working women, they do have bank accounts, right? So because salary gets credited to bank, but look at the number of transactions that happens in the account. Oh, I mean the service here sees that most women are not very, very, investment savvy. They don't really want to invest and take risks. This is like a majority of the mindset because it's, it's always a protective or culture that we have grown up. Right. We have been grown up as a kid that, okay, you have to save, you have to take care. You know, you have to, or you have to secure yourself, and this is how I think the education system in India works too. And this is what makes women very conservative, especially I feel in India. And most of the women though, they earn salaries and their bank account would be limited to the salary account. You don't find them making the investments, which meant there to make it aggressively. Right. They don't actually spend the portfolios aggressively. Now coming to the question of, you know, like how do you give this education to your question that, do you think there's a need for financial education? Yes. I think there's a very, very, very important need for financial education, especially amongst I think the middle class families and, you know, the working woman category, the Indian government is also doing quite a few things to get this education spread amongst the communities. In fact, I think if you look at Jonathan Yogendra that India, God, which makes every household to have an account bank account, you know, compulsory for the purpose of getting the pension or maybe for the purpose of getting any of the amenities, which our government is passing on, the government made it mandatory. I think that was a great initiative from a government perspective to get women data, at least as a concept of saving. And there's a concept of you having an account to get your money. That way the woman doesn't just take all the money and put it in the hands of men. In some families, I think it's very unfortunate that this will happen so that the government has done some initiatives by having this agenda huge now. And I think bringing some education, bringing all the schemes through which the small amount of the money reaches, right. It reaches through an account itself. So even though I think the report says a lot, gradually my view is that is India speaking up. You know, the people are becoming extremely, you know, now savvy about using the bank accounts, you know, using digital means and more so because of the COVID right. In the last six months, I think we have seen a great transformation in India. Maybe this question would have been definitely very relevant six months ago. And I see, Oh, you know, because there was an option for people to use and not to use digital means and accounts and et cetera, or, you know, people may be what I think, not, not really compelled to do it, but if you look at now, I think because of all of these initiatives of a government and the COVID and the digital initiatives, which are coming up in India. Digital India is a biggest initiative in India where everybody is forced to use it. I'll give you like a very small examples of how I see in, you know, women are using, you know, bank accounts now, because they're compelled to have ATM's and pay apps and, you know, all of those digital wallets. You know, I live in a very small place, like, you know, like it's actually cost mobility. And I live in Bangalore, you know, which is, which is a very good city, but there are some places of the Bangalore, which has got, you know, a small streets where all the women sit on the floor and they sell jewelry, they sell vegetables and they sell all the types of items. And I see a biggest advancement amongst them, as they do accept digital mode of cash, which means they're getting comfortable, right, to start using digital initiatives. I think I feel, yes, there is definitely a need. I mean, it is definitely important for government to think through more, to provide a financial education, but there is definitely some kind of an advancement happening in India. So that's what I feel.

Rouba: (06:20)
Amazing initiatives actually. It kind of gives you a very promising view of the future, but I mean, despite this rapid, rapid and consistent growth of the financial sectors, we want to zoom in on that. And specifically in India, there's a widening gender gap in the country's financial industry. I mean, with women, underrepresented, underrepresented in employment, at nearly every single level, this is the very same ecosystem that you rose to a leadership position, and yet you remain undeterred. So how has your experience been, and what were some of your guiding principles?

Asha: (06:59)
Yeah. So it's, it's a journey, Rouba, isn't it? It's all about a journey. Leadership is all about, I think the purpose of a life and living life. And I truly believe in it, you would not be able to achieve anything overnight, you know, in life, right. You have to really strive for it and you have to dream for it. And I've believed in this principle that, you know, you're all about your thoughts. If you think you can, you can, if you think you can't you're right, because you thought that you can't, right. So the human mindset is always about the thoughts and the thoughts makes you and, and thoughts breaks you. So of course, I think the women in India definitely has to, you know, has to support each other to, you know, like get into the ecosystem and understand each other and understand that...