Widely acclaimed as the Master of Value Investing, Parag Parikh (Chairman, Parag Parikh Financial Advisory Services Limited) emerges from his mid-day meditation session, apologetic that he slightly overshot his appointment as he fell into a slumber. He truly personifies equanimity which he talks and walks.
Parag Parikh (www.ppfas.com) has been evangelizing the concept of behavioral finance, appealing investors to remain focused on long-term goals rather than fall prey to instant gratification – staying on the rational track rather than swaying towards the emotional, and surely keeping away from the herd mentality.
While behavioral finance is now a considerably developed science as far as investments are concerned, who but the high priest of rational behavior could be better equipped to unravel some of the diverse currents (and under-currents) that insurers ought to proactively understand and tap?
Praveen Gupta: In behavioral finance do you see a distinct gender divide?
Parag Parikh: Behavior depends on various factors. It is a function of conditioning and circumstances. Given certain circumstances, each one behaves differently. Let us remember that males were predominantly hunters and women homemakers. A hunter has to take bold decisions and would be weak at his own peril. That does not mean either cannot be the other type.
Let us also remember the “Mind versus Heart” and the “Left brain versus Right brain” debate; your circumstances and conditioning would determine whether you are intuitive or calculative.
Interestingly, if you look at today’s trends, women have started dominating and also making investment decisions. Today’s girls are much smarter than boys. We are actually creating divisions.
PG: In terms of segment/s of our society, do you see any patterns in say how senior citizens exercise choice vis-à-vis those in their prime. Likewise, is there any regional bias in terms of risk taking or risk aversion?
PP: You know ageing when you age. With age you generally make wiser decisions. A young guy may no doubt be intelligent and brilliant but it is wisdom that comes with age and endures.
Unfortunately, today’s education is not about compassion and collaboration. It is rather about competition and we make our laws on the basis of that.
“Unfortunately, today’s education is not about compassion and collaboration. It is rather about competition and we make our laws on the basis of that”.
We make our yardsticks for measuring people on the basis of competition. We categorize and incentivize them with money. Money does not give happiness but rather greed and discontent. People do not realize there is something called contentment.
Again, there are some myths like Indians are not long-term investors. That is not true. The very fact that they invest in FDs, PPF, Endowment, Post Office and gold proves it otherwise. Why cannot we cater to that need? We should develop a pull market rather than a push one. We need advertisements that have a thought process that appeals to the rationality rather than the emotional stuff we see today. Behavior is long-term but what are you doing about it?
In South India, which has a very high degree of education, people who are hard working and have humility have a predominantly long-term philosophy and live by that. The North possesses more of a trader mentality. Take Muscat and Dubai, for instance. Both are in the Gulf region, yet Indians in Dubai are driven by instant gratification. Generally, the working class is long-term and businessmen are short-term.
PG: Are there any segments which in your experience demonstrate strong EQ despite a not-so-great IQ or whose EQ and IQ are reasonably at par, or for that matter show high divergence?
PP: It is all about how one individual uses self-control – his or her ability to delay instant gratification and wanting more for less.
PG: Have you noticed any shifting patterns among the youngest of the investing lot?
PP: Today’s young have so many aspirations. They know what is possible. Given the societal change, everything is moving from self-sufficiency to higher self-sufficiency and higher indebtedness in the name of consumerism.
When you are down and out, you are always in a rat race and your nature starts changing. Increasing aspirations of spouse and material pressure further make you lose sight of the value system.
PG: Like the HNIs, are the NRIs one homogeneous lot in terms of investing behavior? Are their motivations and aspirations any different from the rest of the lot? Any noticeable distinction in their preference for an asset class?
PP: HNIs are a different lot. If these are lawyers who litigate, they will be very competitive. Likewise, among doctors there may be ethical or non-ethical strains. The patterns are generally individualistic.
“As a bubble starts to build up, everyone joins in and start losing their rationality. The overarching belief then is that things are going to be permanent”.
PG: How does an inside view influence any particular individual’s rationality in a particular group?
PP: This is all about lack of self-control and willpower. Most of individuals going for instant gratification would be the ones say going for fast food or a smoke despite realizing that it is not good for their health.
PG: Does the investing behavior transcend into how each distinct lot banks or fulfils (or does not fulfil) respective insurance needs?
PP: It is all about needs and aspirations. A 70 year old would want to play very safe but a younger person would like to take chances.
PG: Do you notice any discerning shift when it is a group buying versus an individual one?
PP: We always have safety in numbers. If it is a collective action that turns out to be wrong, all are wrong or a general belief that something good will come out of it. It is just about not taking responsibility.
PG: Any thoughts on how a particular segment which does learn from past irrationality and other which never does?
PP: We have a big market and each year a fresh lot comes in. The new crop ends up making same mistakes of the earlier lot, as they are inexperienced.
PG: Does irrational exuberance have anything to do with all of this?
PP: As a bubble starts to build up, everyone joins in and start losing their rationality. The overarching belief then is that things are going to be permanent.
PG: Do you believe there is a consistency in this ‘emotionality’ of decision-making across all financial services?
PP: Wherever there is money, greed and fear dominate. You need to have the courage to be contrarian if you do not want to lose.
PG: Grateful thanks for these wonderful insights, Paragbhai!
Published in AIR, April 2012
Soren Kierkegaard, the famed Danish theologian, remarked “Once you label me, you negate me”. The process of putting ourselves and others into neat little compartments on the basis of any label and then making judgements about everyone on the basis of those labels is nonspiritual and dehumanizing an experience as I can imagine. Yet it is done all the time. Our government asks us to fill out census reports and to neatly compartmentalize ourselves racially. Funding is allotted on the basis of these distinctions, and prejudices are rampant because we tend to identify one another on the basis of what we can see with our eyes, rather than feel with our hearts. We know that we can exchange our inner organs, and borrow each other’s blood, and we know that our thoughts and our souls are colorless, yet we still need to put labels on ourselves on the basis of what is outside.
— Wayne Dyer in the Chapter on Langston Hughes, WISDOM OF THE AGES
Diversity Training Doesn’t Work*: Contrarian views from Peter Bregman, strategic advisor to CEOs and leadership teams. This piece, in an HBR blog dated March 12th, has already drawn 100+ comments.
- Centers around a media company – Bedia
- Diversity training does not extinguish prejudice; it promotes it
- What people could and could not say seemed to hurt
- Rather than changing attitudes of prejudice and bias, categorizing people reinforces both
- People are not prejudiced against real people; they are prejudiced against categories
- We need to see people as people
- Stop training people to be more accepting of diversity; train them to do their work with a diverse set of individuals, not categories of people
- Move beyond similarity and diversity toward individuality
- The antidote to the ineffectiveness of diversity training is the opposite of diversity training. If you want diversity, think about an individual, another, then another
- So how did Bedia get it right? They decided to put all managers through communication training. People learned to listen and speak with each other, no matter the difference; this is the key to creating a vibrant and inclusive environment
So is this really a case against diversity training? Or is it perhaps the next step forward?
*Original blog by Peter Bregman: http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2012/03/diversity-training-doesnt-work.html?awid=8988621802016686590-3271
Distribution and delivery are virtually used as synonyms, in our industry. As a matter of fact, distribution dominates in terms of usage and application. Does it represent some form of diversity or diversion? Sorry for this digression!
Delivery equals indispensability
The quiet agent or the insurance man who could get almost anything done – would even pay your premiums when the policy became due and for some reason you were likely to miss out renewing your cover. He would be out there ahead of your beck and call, God forbid, if you had a claim trigger under any of your policies. He could also get all your other avenues like tax-saving addressed, at your door-step. A seamless intermediation, an epitome of delivery rather than distribution. Far diverse in offerings rather than a mere transactional one-off relationship. Maturing with time like a good quality wine. In other words, near indispensable part of your financial risk management value chain. And what made it difficult to dispense was the value proposition – ‘always there for you’.
For anyone today who tends to take the virtual anytime communication for granted, forever – the age and woes of landline phones would be far and wide out of bounds of their imagination. Particularly in places where it was a luxury and not commodity. All the gaps and snags were taken care of by this one man institution. It was certainly not terminated by advances either in telephony or internet.
Distribution is not equal to delivery
Distribution is but a small part of delivery and more fixated with the Point of Sale (POS). We trade in the business of trouble. The woes of our trade commence only after a sale. POS is only the first major milestone. Thereafter come the several test cases – sometimes unique to each individual every time – thereby very special Moments of Truth (MOT). It is actually going beyond realm of sale into the world of individual experience that makes our business uniquely diverse.
Yes, it has its own downsides because we then impose Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which do not allow the individual customer to be treated as special. Our call centres – whether onshore, off-shore or outsourced – further complicate it in their ‘diverse’ ways. Generally, cultural in nuances.
Sighting the POS – MOT gulf
Having sold you a policy or any financial product for that matter, the focus of a financial services entity is on the next kill (sale). The ‘back office’ is faceless, notoriously prone to staffing churn, diverse in unacceptable ways and the customer is a king or queen of no consequence. A deviously divergent diversity of today. The customer is confused and anxious, because distribution only drives sales. It wants to sell what it wants to sell. Neither what the end user desires or deserves, nor a solution. This can never lead to a true fulfillment.
Distribution is about sales hence short-term. It is full of discontinuity thereby makes it harder to retain a customer. We all know it is more expensive to acquire a new customer than retaining one. It makes the entire arithmetic unsustainable.
Delivery on the other hand is service driven. It is about managing and sustaining the continuum of relationship. Thereby comes in bottom line value. Unfortunately and increasingly the insurance business is configured as a sales organization. The behavior and personality mutate into something inherently contradictory. Not just that, some of them also tend to pose as role models for the bottom of the pyramid entities who owe their existence to pure service. In emerging economies this is embedding a bad DNA into the evolutionary cycle of the financial services architecture.
In conclusion
The insurance business need to really think hard and deep as to where must it head. It cannot afford to be naïve in interchanging distribution for delivery. Having done so, it calls for a course correction. It must not allow itself to be conditioned as a sales industry. The POS mind-set needs to be reconfigured as MOT. Both are diverse in their own ways. Let us not forget that having chosen the current way; we have already invited upon ourselves the risk of unintended consequence. Before this risk becomes perilous enough to threaten our raison d’être let us bring back the indispensability of service that we all seem to be missing in the world of financial super-markets or the one-stop shops. Let us not digress from our kind of desirable diverse ways.
Published in AIR, January 2012
Photo by Ryan Martis
As soon as the CX 751 jetliner took him off Bombay (that’s how he prefers to call it) to Hong Kong on his eventual destination Vancouver, young Anosh Irani (www.anoshirani.com) pulled out paper to pen his first story!
Destiny beckoned the author away from one of the most crowded and chaotic spots in the world to the most livable and serene. He says he was too full of Bombay (as he still is) and needed to get out to a place where he could explore all that he had experienced. And fill all the gaps with his imagination!
Coming from a colorful story-telling Parsi family and having grown up in the action- packed suburb of Byculla, the Mumbai riots of 1993 weighed heavy on his gentle soul. The fermenting concoction was ready to explode. Vancouver was just the soil for his creative genius to germinate and blossom. Perhaps representative of “the city of no sadness”, an idyllic fantasy and dream city as in his book THE SONG OF KAHUNSHA.
Praveen Gupta: Did you have to be in Vancouver to realize your potential? And why Vancouver?
Anosh Irani: I needed to get away in order to write. A novelist has to be able to write from the inside and the outside. Being away gave me perspective.
PG: In what ways did being away from India/ Bombay facilitate your exploration and expression?
AI: It helped me realize what stories I wanted to tell. The images and characters that haunted and inspired me remained. The rest dissolved over time.
PG: In some ways Dahanu Road is, in parts, your travel into your family’s origins from Persia. Are we going to see more of Persia in your other works?
AI: I don’t know. I certainly want to visit Iran. But I feel for now most of my writing will be set in Bombay. It’s my muse, my teacher, my nemesis. Bombay is hard to shake off, once it gets into your blood.
PG: After themes from India and a glimpse into Persia, would there be a Vancouver some day?
AI: I wrote a play called My Granny the Goldfish that’s set in a Vancouver hospital. That’s about as far as I’d like to go for now. Vancouver gives me the peace of mind to write and reflect. India is the inspiration; Canada is the canvas.
PG: You are indeed one of the ‘many’ accomplished Indian origin authors in Canada. I can count Rohinton Mistry, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Rao Badami. Thanks to you all, do you see a distinctly emerging genre?
AI: I don’t see any genre, but I do see brilliant storytellers. Starting with Rushdie. And Mistry’s A Fine Balance remains, after all these years, my favorite novel. What sets apart the Indian novelists from many others is the scope of their storytelling. It’s epic; an entire universe is contained in one story.
PG: How diverse is your treatment of prose? Short stories, plays, novels, movie scripts, et al?
AI: Each story lends itself to a particular form. One has to understand what each form does – its restrictions and the space it allows. When a story comes to me, I don’t have to choose whether it would be a play or a novel. It comes ready, fit for only that medium. But in all of these, structure is very crucial.
PG: Are you also going to look at a more diverse canvas (other parts of India) than the Bombay first-hand experience?
AI: For now, there are enough Bombay stories to write three more novels. And the city keeps changing, evolving, thus keeping writers like myself in a chokehold.
PG: Do you also experiment in Non-fiction?
AI: No, although I have written the odd book review. I also wrote an article on the Taj terror attacks that was published in the New York Times.
PG: You are very young and already well-acclaimed. How would you like to evolve as an author?
AI: By taking risks. When there is no risk to the storytelling, no gamble, the writer is as good as dead.
PG: Last but not the least, what would you like to be best remembered for? Not just another non-resident writer??
AI: It’s too early for anyone to remember me. One has to be recognized first. So there’s only one option: create without fear.
PG: Best wishes for all your dreams, Anosh!
* Literally, Nectar/ Immortal, in Persian.
Whoever said when Singaporeans drive their Ferraris on Singapore roads, one step on the accelerator and they end up in the sea! Whoever said India and F1! Whoever said F1 and women drivers! The first two, though seemingly impossible, did eventually happen. For those who believe the latter will never happen, there is some interesting history waiting to repeat!
Singa Roar:
After four successful races, Singapore is today the most dramatic of racing theatres on the F1 circuit, the only night race till date. The Lion City roars as the colorful cars zip around the brilliantly dazzling city streets. Apart from the road blocks, complaining cabbies, soaring hotel fares – for three days each year everything in the island nation, other than the race cars, comes to a stand-still.
In so many ways the F1 theatre epitomizes Singapore racing ahead of the pack in each and every field. A centre stage and dynamo for everything awe-inspiring. A venue so compelling that no event manager can afford to give it a miss.
Force India:
The inaugural Indian GP raised many an eyebrow. Despite all its heat and dust, it drew a record crowd and demonstrated the ability to commercially host and perhaps sustain up to 4 races a year, at multiple locations.
It all started with the coming of age of Indian race drivers, sponsors, racing team, fan following and software powering the racing technology. A venue was but a logical progression. For a change, cricket was banished from headline news and sport pages. There was even talk of more go-kart race tracks to nurture budding race drivers. Bollywood converged at the Buddh race circuit. Ferrari and Tendulkar were no longer synonymous. Every roadside driver in whatsoever jam and road condition, now had an aspiration – to make an F1 circuit out of Indian roads and a prancing horse of his or her four and even three wheeler!
Increasing Asian locale and the growing BRIC power drove the g-force in this direction. The seven sisters Japan; Korea; China; Malaysia; Singapore; Abu Dhabi; Bahrain found an eighth in India, leaving only Russia outside the BRIC quadrant. With the Black Sea resort Sochi signed up from 2014, this cementing would be complete, too.
History to repeat:
For the incredulous lot – five women racing drivers have indeed entered at least one GP, although only two of them ever qualified and started a race. Maria Teresa De Filippis (1958 Monaco GP) was the first woman to compete (Maserati and Behra Porsche). It was Lella Lombardi who competed in the most races. Seventeen entries and twelve starts (March, RAM & Williams). She was also the first woman to score points (1975, Spanish GP).
While Nascar has seen the girl power on rise, what chance for a future female F1 star? It’s been a while since Danica Patrick has been linked with a move to F1. Talented German Touring Car star Susie Stoddart has been talked about too. Says David Coulthard, “One of the reasons there are no female competitors is that boys are encouraged to get involved at an early age. More men get into it, because more boys get into it.”
Today everyone’s talking about Monisha Kaltenborn, F1’s most high profile and influential woman – CEO, Team Sauber. Kaltenborn has also been involved in bringing forward the attitude towards women in the sport. “I think people not teams but others especially media, they don’t ask a woman a question relating to performance.”
“The questions I get are normally very strategic about the company, the team, where F1 is going but never how the race was and what I feel about the drivers. But that’s changing now. It’s interesting to see how people take a while to get used to these kinds of questions to women.”
Realising the gender gap needed to be closed, the sport’s governing body, FIA, set up the Women and Motorsports Commission last year, where Kattenborn is taking a leading role.
“We are realizing that to a certain age there are a lot of young girls driving in car series and then suddenly, when it gets into the next category, it drops off. A lot of that is to do with the whole social set up they have.”
Chequered flag:
FIA big boss Bernie Ecclestone has even said a woman could be his successor! So what does the future hold? Lot more Asian flavor in the races, increasing BRIC power and not just women back into the car cockpits but driving the F1 itself!! Watch-out for the new roar!!!
Scarcity of senior women at big corporations remains a concern as much for media as for diversity practitioners. “The total number of women CEOs in the Fortune 500 is only 15, up from just 2 when the list debuted in 1998.”
“Indeed at a time when women have gained more standing in politics & society, they have not made equal progress at the top of corporate America. Women comprise half of the workforce but hold only 16% of the board seats in Fortune 500 companies. More than 10% of those companies have no women serving on their boards.”
Are quotas any solution?
“The problem with quotas is that they are a one-size-fits-all solution”, notes Wharton finance professor Alex Edmans. “Shareholders have an incentive to appoint the best people to a board. It is true that, in some firms, there may be discrimination, but it is very difficult for regulators to know which firms these are. The best solution (to eliminate) discrimination is market forces. If a firm is not promoting the best people – some of whom are invariably women – it will lose business. It’s just like a baseball team that refuses to hire ethnic minorities: It will be less effective on the field and lose its league position.”
“The more diverse the background, expertise and experience of the board members, the better they will be at issuing guidance.”
That’s a good argument not just for gender diversity, but also for bringing in board members of different races and nationalities.”
The SEC could for instance take a cue from Australia and issue a formal requirement for firms to institute a board diversity policy that consists of measurable objectives.
“Now access to education seems to be much fairer, and so there should be a very strong pipeline of qualified women and other minorities in the future”, says Edmans.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2861
Published in AIR, November 2011
