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...