Thoughts on Jago Investor’s Financial Planner Survey

Jago Investor, which is perhaps the best Indian personal finance blog, did a survey on what people wanted from a financial planner, and I thought the results were quite interesting, and worth sharing here.

I hadn’t taken the survey but if I had, my views would’ve fallen with the majority on almost all the issues, and none of the majority responses surprised me (the wording of the questions had a little do with that as well).

What did surprise me however was that 93% of the respondents were male. That doesn’t seem to be consistent with ratio of men and women readers.

Manish wasn’t surprised by the results and said it correctly represented his demographic. Although I’ve never done a survey here which would show the split between men and women, in answering comments and responding to emails, I would’ve thought the ratio is even or at least much more balanced than those results. This is something worth exploring further because if this ratio is correct then it doesn’t correctly reflect the ratio of working men and women, and it will be interesting to find out why that is.

The other thing that caught my attention was this result.

75% people said they will not go for any financial planning with corporates like ICICI Direct, Edelweiss or such firms.

On the face of it, this sounds like bad news of companies like ICICI Direct, but when you think about it some more, you realize that the financial planning market is just so small that it doesn’t make much of a difference to big corporates if people don’t want to go to them for their financial planning.

This does present a good opportunity to individual planners who are trying to build a business in this niche area and are taking risks leaving comfortable jobs, in many cases with these same big corporates.

This survey should hopefully give them some encouragement and gives a good perspective on this new industry, which is still in its formative years. The whole survey is a quick and interesting read and can be found here.

8 thoughts on “Thoughts on Jago Investor’s Financial Planner Survey”

  1. 1. Parents’ struggle with a mountain of loans and zero savings!!! 🙁
    2. Terrible relatives (the evil Saas-Bahu kinds) who do not allow us to seek help from other relatives!!!
    3. Hardly anyone stands by us to help us in times of financial need.
    4. I have a dream to pursue Masters in UK, for which I need 20 lacs but I can’t afford to take loan because neither I nor my Dad can repay it. Dad earns well, but 75% of his salary goes into repayment of home loan!!!!

    All these things made me realize I’m pretty much on my own and I need to do my best to secure myself first, my parents next, and my future kids (if they too want to pursue higher education abroad). All these things kind of made me feel that no amount of money is enough, and that I really should save very carefully and invest carefully as well.

  2. I really appreciate Manshu regarding his anticipation regarding low women participation in financial planning. Being a girl, I too feel the same way. I really hope women take up the cudgel too!

  3. I think ratio of working men and women can be different then

    1. Ratio of men and women reading about personal finance – which can be different than
    2. Ration of men and women interacting on blogs and websites on personal finance and it can be different then
    3. Ratio of men and women taking part in activities like survey’s / meetups etc .

    What do you think ?

    Manish

  4. Survey results showing 93% male respondents is explainable to some extent as follows.

    A. Priority of most women is bearing, rearing, training and educating children. the mundane task of financial planning they can easily pass on to their hubbys!

    B. Many persons are holding their Demat accounts and investments in the names of their non working wives so as to share tax burden.

    C. many educated and working women trust their hubbys or parents to take financial decisions.

    D. Many women are content as long as they have enough for their daily shopping, maintain their lifestyle and have something for the future. They can easily survive through thrifty living if they have less in future.

    E. Some women think that Financial Planning is just a career for the survival of Financial Planners. One should learn to save and limit their expenses within their means and not plan to make millions to spend in later life. if you have less resources in later part of your life, just spend less. too much money does not bring any additional happiness.

    Another area for doing a survey may be ‘are women happier than men?’ inspite of not being active respondents in the present survey!

    1. I don’t think any of this is all that applicable to modern working women who in most cases earn as much (if not more) as their husbands and of course are equally educated as well.

      1. Hi Manshu

        I am not sure why you feel like that, but I think atleast point C is very much applicable to women in India even if they are well educated and earning . Somewhere they still feel that their earning is secondary and hence they do not take care of its management properly and they are somewhere not very much inclined towards personal finance as much as men do , may be because of our genetic structure .

        I would say this is improving , but we are not at a level where we can say both men and women are at same level . This is what I have experienced .

        Manish

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