Shweta Jain, Chief Operating Officer, International Money Matters Private Limited, is a fiery financial adviser always looking for ways to spread financial awareness. We had a quick chat with her.
Tell us about yourself.
I work for International Money Matters Private Limited, a financial planning firm in Bangalore. We manage over Rs. 1,000 crore in assets, have 3 offices and cater to over 550 families.
Being a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) with more than 14 years of experience in the financial service space, I like to run the organisation to match client expectations and retain talent. My courses on Wealth Management and Behavioural Finance from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) have, of course, helped.
I love conducting workshops and have been doing so for the last seven years. I have conducted over 100 workshops for over 5,000 individuals and advisers. Apart from writing articles for leading finance portals and magazines, I’m in the process of authoring a book on investing which is being published by Network18.
Additional Reading: Investment Plans For Women
Tell us about your journey as well as your perspective as a woman financial adviser.
I started off 14+ years ago, joining a start-up which was a year old then because I believed that good financial advice can truly change lives. Everyone needs advice but doesn’t know it. From being the only woman in a conference/ fund manager meeting to having people dismiss my questions- these had become so routine that you just took this as part of life. The only solution was to keep doing better and better and to have more women in your team/ on your side.
As more and more women join this profession and take this to the next level, we will see the profession truly evolve. There wasn’t a glass ceiling as such, but you had to work four times harder than anyone else to get noticed and for people to believe that you were serious about your career. Running a company now (since I have seen some of the struggles), I empathise with women advisers and tend to cut them some slack, but I don’t like it when women use their gender to make excuses for not doing their job. I believe in an equal world- both genders having equal responsibilities and respect.
Additional Reading: Financial Planning For Women
Your opinion on women and money?
When it comes to budgeting, splurging or setting aside money for the rainy days, you think of your mom, your wife or your grandmother almost automatically. My grandmother had a way of putting money in various jars in the kitchen to ensure we always had something stashed away. I have seen my mum write down each and every expense and then check if the month’s expenses were more than the previous one’s. This is the stereotype we have to deal with as women. While this is fine, what isn’t is that we are also automatically assumed as the gender which doesn’t understand “investments” and that is anything but true.
Additional Reading: Women! Here’s How To Boost Your Income
Why do you think women are good investors?
Some of our qualities as women actually help us make good investment decisions:
- We ask for directions: We aren’t afraid to ask which is the way to go, why we should take that route or invest in a certain asset class/ scheme. The fact that we ask others and look for opinions is fantastic for us. We admit that we don’t know stuff and that’s actually a huge positive; this means we are willing to learn.
- We shop around: We look for the best deals around – that’s a well-known fact. How this works in case of investments is that when looking for advice, we also ask around and only sign up if we’re totally convinced that this is the best we can get or that this is worth our time/ money.
- We aren’t overconfident: Since we are willing to admit that we don’t know, we are barely confident when it comes to investments; forget about being over confident. This works in our favour because more often than not, mistakes happen because of overconfidence, be it that it’s one’s knowledge about the project or views on the world. We are often so confident about things that aren’t in our control, that it is scary because our portfolios are designed to match that view.
- We are patient: Once we start a project, we stick to it. We read about investments, what we should and shouldn’t do, we look for advisers, choose one that suits us best and then give them time to do their thing. This thing called financial planning/ investment planning will one day help us achieve financial “nirvana” or financial independence.
- We think long term: We’re usually thinking far into the future, thinking of 5, 10 or even 15 years ahead of us comes easy to us. While we do believe in living in the moment, the fact is that we can stick with some commitments for the future because thinking long term does come easily to us.
- We bucket things: We have a tendency to put expenses in different buckets, so when it comes to investments also, we can bucket different investments into short term and long term. This means we don’t touch the long-term bucket for our short-term needs. This helps us in staying disciplined and committed.
So while my mum and grand mum left these impressions on me, my attempt is to leave my son with the impression that his mother was a good adviser and a damn good investor!
Additional Reading: Women: Here’s How To Maintain Work-Life Balance
Got wiser? If you are looking for more advice, we are always around, along with the best financial products in the market.