Future Female Forward | Women don’t lack investing skills, they lack awareness: Franklin Templeton India

Women are not held back from investing because they lack financial skills, but because they lack awareness and access, according to Avinash Satwalekar, President of Franklin Templeton India, who said the country needs a sustained push towards financial inclusion for women, especially in rural India.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18 as part of the Future Female Forward series, Satwalekar said many women are already making financial decisions every day while managing household budgets, but do not see themselves as investors.

“There’s this myth that women don’t understand investing, and that is truly a myth,” he said. “They’re doing it all the time.”

He explained that women routinely make what are effectively asset allocation decisions while running households — allocating money towards education, food, clothing and savings — but their savings often remain limited to cash, bank deposits or informal products such as chit funds because of low awareness about formal investment options.

“What we’re saying is, you’re already doing it. What you’re doing on the savings side needs to start converting into investing,” Satwalekar said.

The remarks come at a time when India’s mutual fund industry is approaching the ₹100 lakh crore assets under management milestone, even as women’s participation in financial investments remains significantly lower than men’s.

Satwalekar said the idea behind Franklin Templeton’s ‘Change the soch’ campaign emerged from an internal interaction during Women’s Day celebrations in 2023. He recalled asking female employees how many invested in mutual funds, and while most raised their hands, very few said they personally made the investment decisions.

“It was pretty much any living, breathing male relative in the vicinity — father, brother, cousin, uncle, whoever,” he said.

That led the fund house to launch an investor awareness drive across rural India, travelling from Kanyakumari to Srinagar over 30 days, covering 4,100 kilometres and 21 cities.

The campaign revealed stark regional and social differences in financial awareness, he said. While literacy levels among women were significantly higher in southern India, awareness about investment products remained low in several rural areas.

Satwalekar recounted an interaction in Kanyakumari where 500 women farmers attended an awareness session and none had previously heard of mutual funds.

“But by the end of the session they felt confident enough to ask what the next step is. Then you realise awareness is the key,” he said.

He also pointed to the sharp divide between urban and rural India in terms of access to financial products and institutions. According to him, urban women are more likely to trust brands and financial institutions, while rural women place greater trust in personal relationships and community networks.

Satwalekar argued that women are often more goal-oriented investors than men, focusing on long-term objectives such as children’s education, buying a home or retirement planning rather than chasing short-term returns.

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“The product discussion is the last discussion,” he said. “Fund selection is the absolute last thing because that is just a tool to get you to your goal.”

He added that India must urgently build financial awareness and retirement preparedness before demographic trends shift and the country loses the advantage of its young population.

“We don’t have that social safety net,” Satwalekar said. “We have to create it. We need to solve the problem before it becomes a problem.”