As the horror of the second wave of Covid was unfolding in India, our mentor and guide, Deepti Sagar was looking for ways to help. She signed up as a volunteer in our #NotAlone community, and quickly became a pillar of strength for our members there!
Around that time, a lot of women in India had just lost their husband or primary breadwinner of their family to the pandemic. On top of their grief, they found themselves suddenly having to deal with something they had never even thought about before – finances.
Loans, insurance, retirement plans, succession planning – these were completely unfamiliar concepts to them. They were in deep distress trying to figure it all out for the first time in their lives. That was, until they met Deepti.
Deepti came with more than 20 years of wealth management experience, but above all, she brought unbelievable amounts of empathy, compassion and kindness to the table. She made incredible efforts to connect with the women in the community, understand their key concerns, and background contexts. ‘I always tried to keep a local context to their solutions so that depending on where they are based, they can get the relevant support,’ Deepti says.
The first thing she did was to understand each woman’s individual priorities. Some wanted to ensure that their children’s education was not interrupted. Some had immediate obligations like loan repayment. Others wanted to have a steady income stream or needed to plan for the future. Once she understood these goals, she went about advising them on the next steps. She helped them demystify the process and broke the solution down into little steps so that it never felt overwhelming for anyone.
‘The main thing was to make them independent in a way that they felt comfortable asking the key questions to banks or insurance providers, and come back with the right amount of information themselves,’ Deepti tells us.
‘It was so heartening to see these same women on the follow-up calls, in complete action mode! They had already taken the steps discussed, done their homework and were just checking back in about a few small things,’ she smiles. ‘In fact some had moved on from asking about fixed deposits to asking questions about mutual funds and the market movements. It was so great to see their resilience!’ Deepti thanks the #NotAlone anchors, without whom the task wouldn’t have been so easy.
As for the idea that women are not naturally cut out for finance, Deepti can’t think of anything more inaccurate. In fact, she believes that women have a knack for getting down to the basics of finance – to understand the risks, benefits and the crux of exactly how something can help them.