How BigDecisions is changing the way Indians make financial decisions

I recently did an interview with Businessworld on how BigDecisions is influencing Indian's to take smarter financial decisions. A few key Q&A from the interview:

Is BigDecisions helping consumers in asking the right question? 

We have several tools and calculators on the site that help users with some of life’s big financial situations. Our Rent or Buy a house calculator is one of them. After using such tools we help people ask the right questions and start a conversation with the broker, advisor or the agent. So, rather than ask general, more open ended questions whether or not he / she should buy the property, our tool helps consumers seek answers to more specific questions like reasons for expected double digit appreciation that could be a bigger driver of the buying decision rather than a general recommendation. 

How is the present state of advice that Indian investors get? 

You have a huge number of middle level income people in India who haven’t necessarily been served adequately either in the form of advice or by aggregator platforms that help consumers compare and buy products. Let me just flip it and address the reason we really exist, when there were always people to help with financial decisions. I think there is a clear shortfall in the quality of advice people get especially if you are not a high net worth individual. So, If you draw a 2x2 matrix and look at advisor knowledge, with low-high on one axis and advisor integrity on the other, you will have advisors who tick on the top right, i.e. have integrity and knowledge with investor interest. However, in our experience, 90 per cent of the country (advisor community) falls in the other boxes. Sometimes, lack of advisor knowledge is an issue. More often that not, incentives are misaligned i.e. not always in the consumers’ best interest. All this combined has necessitated consumers wanting to be more in control of their financial decisions.

Where does BigDecisions fit in? 

So, the whole idea of BigDecisions is to help Indian consumers that neither know enough to make their own decisions nor trust entirely the advice that they are getting, by making available data that they don’t normally have, combined with algorithms and research backed content, helping them to be more in control of their financial decisions. 

You can read the interview in full on the Businessworld website - https://businessworld.in/banking-finance-personal-finance/decision-what-i-should-do-my-child%E2%80%99s-education-and-not-which-fund-i#sthash.rdOtOEzs.dpbs