Who wants financial literacy?

When you ask this question almost all hands will go up in any group. Now let us say you are a doctor and you have been informed that there is a workshop on finance. Do you think doctors will turn up?

In an office with many women 2 workshops are announced – a) How to use make up and b) Financial empowerment of women. How many women turn up for the first event and how many for the second event? Wanna guess?

So it is easy for people to say “industry should spend money, time and effort on spreading financial literaccy. The so called “participants” aka target audience should also behave in such a way that the lectures get attended!

I have done upwards of 100 seminars / talks for doctors – from Chandigarh in the North, Rajkot in the west, Guwahati in the East, Trivandrum and Coimbatore in the south. Almost all the doctors enjoy what they see / hear. However they have come there because some representative of a pharma company or bank or mutual fund or……have been pushing for them to attend. Does a doctor find the even on the net and just attend? Helll no. They have to be wooed – they need to be called, cajoled, picked up and dropped…or they will not come. Ditto for Chartered Accountants.

When I announce a workshop – paid or otherwise – many people express an interest in attending..well some do come..but I am finding it difficult to fill up a class beyond 30 people.

Why am I saying all this?

Well almost all doctors tell me “doctors are poor investors”. Many Chartered Accountants tell me “we are not updated in the investments…”.

However when you ask them to come for a “free” workshop, they expect to be pampered – cocktails, car pick up and drop, …..for “learning” about personal investing.

Will somebody explain this conundrum?