Shifting to Financial Assets

Real estate, gold, small savings have all lost their lustre in last couple of years as people explore newer ways to build wealth.

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The penchant among Indians towards real assets—gold and real estate—is fast losing favour with a significant rise in financial assets held by people, according to the recently released data by the Reserve Bank of India. The data indicates that the percentage of bank deposits in overall savings made by the household sector in financial assets declined from 54 per cent to 41 per cent between financial years 2013-14 and 2015- 16. In the 2015-16 period, investments in financial assets—bank deposits, non-banking deposits, life insurance funds, provident and pension funds, currency, shares and debentures—in the economy grew by ₹14.89 lakh crore.