Putting women in charge of their money

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Editor's note: “The moment you want to lend or even in investing, or in insurance where you're dealing with an institution, that's when biases start to come in. Whether it is the type of product being sold, or the salesman who is usually a man, there is a bias in the way financial services are sold,” says Shinjini Kumar. Kumar is co-founder of SALT, one of a number of Indian startups building financial products for women. The world of finance has always been dominated by men. Despite public policy initiatives and women leaders climbing the corporate ladder over the past two decades, gender biases remain intact within the system.  A few years ago, the Indian financial system had a number of banks being run by women, including Arundhati Bhattacharya of State Bank of India, Shikha Sharma of Axis Bank, Chanda Kochhar of ICICI Bank, Usha Ananthasubramanian of Allahabad Bank, Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC India and Kalpana Morparia of JPMorgan India. All of them have since left, and with mergers among state-run banks, none of India’s banks today are run by a …