Expense Account, Mint
When I began doing a personal finance show on TV about seven years ago, I was inundated by stock tip seeking questions. But I was clear that what we were setting out to do was financial literacy and not giving cheap stock tips. It took work to nudge the questions in a particular direction, but within a few weeks of the show, the questions changed. They changed from asking if they should buy or sell a particular stock to the “I have so much money, what product do I buy?” questions. A product sales driven model of retail finance, fuelled by commission bearing products, had framed the market in a certain way. So instead of using products to solve financial problems, manufacturers and sellers aim to soak up all the surplus money by selling a product that gave the highest commission to the seller. Smart Money on Bloomberg India TV is my fourth show and we (co-anchor Vivek Law and I) began with portfolio-driven questions—where viewers were writing in to ask if their portfolios were Ok. And now within 15 weeks, we see a pattern emerge that tells me that people are finally asking the right questions. Though half are still driven by questions around a portfolio check, the rest deal with issues around individual financial situations. We’ve moved from trying to find a product to hit with our savings to a place where we want a plan that we can follow for the rest of our lives.