Money 20/20 Asia: Financial inclusion requires more than marketing: Goldman alumnus

Financial services companies must ensure initiatives to improve global financial inclusion for women go beyond simply marketing, a former Goldman Sachs product specialist has warned.

Speaking at Money 20/20 Asia on Tuesday (23 April 2024), Hena Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Basis, an education-driven financial services platform, said companies are missing out on the US $700bn market because they are not building programmes that are organisation-wide.

“Let’s not look at this as just a marketing problem,” Mehta said. “This is not about gender washing. We need to be looking at financial services holistically in order to target the $700bn market.”

Mehta used the Money 20/20 platform to issue the warning, just days after she conducted an interview with US television network CNBC, where the low levels of female participation in mutual fund investment in India was highlighted.

She told the network that “the number of women investing in mutual funds has increased between 58% to 60% – So we are making progress.

“Within the Basis community as well, about 50-55% of women started investing after joining the Basis platform because they finally got the knowledge they needed, trust gaps were filled, they got the confidence etc. We do have a lot of work to do.”