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officer, ICICI Bank, Naina Lal Kidwai, group general manager and country head, India, HSBC, Shikha Sharma, chief executive officer, Axis Bank, Ashu Suyash, managing director and country-head, India, Fidelity International, and Renu Sud Karnad, managing director-designate, HDFC. Does this formidable line-uop tell you a story other than their obvious professional excellence?

Add to this women from business families such as Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairperson, Biocon, Sulajja Firodia Motwani, joint managing director, Kinetic Engineering, Priya Paul, chairperson, Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels and newcomers such as Roshni Nadar, chief executive, HCL group, and the story becomes more compelling. It is a story not just of professional and business success, but also a reckoner of the growing wealth that Indian women possess that money managers can ignore only at their own peril.

In fact, the increasing financial clout of working women have not evaded the keen eyes of wealth managers. “During recent times, the business world has seen a rush of high-level appointments that are great growth stories about women professionals. We are seeing a lot of successful women professionals in the higher echelons from the 1990s MBA batches,” Suhail Kazmi, president, wealth management, Yes Bank, said.

Kazmi said the rising professional fortunes of women and the attendant wealth provides a mouth-watering prospect for wealth managers. “With improving career graphs, women today have a lot of disposal income. There is a huge amount of wealth that these highly qualified and successful women have,” he said.

Other leading managers of wealth agree. “Women, as a distinctive segment, are doing well and are having increasingly higher investible surpluses. The segment itself is growing. The number of women in our client base is growing,” said Vikas Agnihotri, chief executive officer, Religare Macquirie Private Wealth.

Hrishikesh Parandikar, chief executive officer, Karvy Private Wealth, is also keeping a close watch on women. “Working women as a sub-segment is definitely growing. This is clearly a sub-segment that is our potential client base,” he said.

While the peak is getting crowded by the day, down below, the demographic churn is also occurring at a rapid pace. An indication to this was recently given by the country’s leading software company, Infosys claimed the percentage of women employees has touched nearly 33 per cent of its strength of 1.05 lakh and the proportion could only rise in the days to come. A good 17 per cent of the company’s women employees are in mid-level jobs. Infosys’ peers, such as Tata Consultancy Services (30 per cent women), Wipro (28 per cent) and IBM (26 per cent) are also seeing a narrowing of the gender gap.

A study released in May 2009 by IT industry body, Nasscom, along with human resources consulting firm, Mercer, said, “India has more working women than any other country in the world” with 30-35 per cent of the 400 million workforce being women. The study titled ‘Gender-Inclusivity in India: Building an Empowered Organisation’ pointed out that while in the mid 1980s, only 5-8 per cent of students were in engineering colleges were women, by 2005, 40.4 per cent of the entrants into institutions of higher education were women. While wealth managers may be drooling, does enough awareness exist among the target audience about the need to seek professional advice to not only preserve their wealth but also to grow it? The answer appears to be a definite affirmative.

Om Ahuja, executive vice-president and country head, liabilities and investment management, Yes Bank, said women have increasingly started taking their own financial decisions, which is leading them to the doors of wealth managers. “Women are taking financial decisions independently. Earlier, they were consulting their families on their financial savings. Now, they are often seeking the help of advisers,” he added.

“In general, we are seeing a growing trend of professional women seeking good advisers to manage their wealth,” said Agnihotri.

In fact, wealth managers appear to be more comfortable with women as a client class than their male counterparts. “We see higher financial discipline among women. They are more conservative, more thrifty and more planning-oriented,” said Parandikar.

Agnihotri agreed. “The distinguishing feature of women clients is that they are more patient with the advisers, more willing to listen and are more receptive to ideas during the planning process. This helps us in understand their cash flows and goals,” he said.

Wealth managers are unanimous that though they are fighting shoulder-to-shoulder at the workplace, the financial goals and the drivers of financial planning for working women differ substantially from men. Advisers say that women are being driven to wealth managers due to work-related issues such as periodic job breaks and social issues such as rising divorce rates.

“Women feel a greater need for financial security since they are more prone to career breaks. Very often, they might have to move out early due to family requirements. The rising divorce rates are also making them wary. It is unfortunate but also a social reality. Statistically, women outlive their partners by four-five years. All these bring in the need for greater financial independence and self reliance,” added Agnihotri.

Kartik Verma, co-founder, iTrust Financial Advisory, also said social changes are forcing women to be more conscious about the need for financial planning. “Divorce rates are going up and that is making women feel the need to be financially secure to meet all eventualities,” Verma said.

Kazmi points out that Yes Bank’s formal offering of a wealth management product launched in October - YES FIRST for Women – was an acknowledgment of their rising financial might. “We have culminated our thinking in a formal offering after detailed analysis of the financial wants of the high net worth women. Therefore, our product focuses on some access, convenience and our advisory strength,” Kazmi said.

Other financial advisers say more such dedicated wealth management products would soon hit the market. “We will see many more dedicated wealth management products for women in the coming years as an increasing number of women join the workforce and rise up the business hierarchy. I think we have reached an inflexion point when it comes to working women,” said Verma.