More women are mov­ing away from sav­ing for a rainy day and are in­stead look­ing to seize the day through in­vest­ments.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change Lim­it­ed (TTSE) is seek­ing to cap­i­talise on this trend through the launch of its Fi­nan­cial Eq­ui­ty Women In­vest­ing Cam­paign, launched on March 15, 2023.

"As we en­tered 2023, a fo­cus of ours was fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence through in­vest­ments, which the TTSE thinks is im­por­tant for women and more so for those who are seek­ing to have a life of pros­per­i­ty, build wealth and meet their short and long-term goals," said the TTSE's Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Eva Mitchell.

She point­ed out that up­on re­view­ing their own da­ta trends, the num­ber of women in­vest­ing and trad­ing had been on a rise.

"Over the last five years, we have seen an an­nu­al growth of over 50 per cent in the num­ber of women open­ing bro­ker­age ac­counts and ac­tu­al­ly trad­ing on the lo­cal stock ex­change, show­ing that women are tak­ing more in­ter­est in their fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence," she said. "Women are now more em­pow­ered and are tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps in in­creas­ing and se­cur­ing their fi­nan­cial wealth."

Mitchell said that this is the cur­rent trend glob­al­ly, as women now have more ac­cess to var­i­ous op­tions in be­com­ing more fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent, which were not avail­able to them in the past.

"Gen­er­al­ly, on an in­ter­na­tion­al scale, women are con­trol­ling more and more of the world's wealth. Typ­i­cal­ly you would in­fer that in­vest­ment was some­thing that a man would be keen­er on do­ing with women be­ing more com­fort­able with the sav­ings as­pect, in that we are com­fort­able with just putting away mon­ey in a se­cured sav­ings ac­count for a rainy day," she ob­served.

"But there's a dif­fer­ence be­tween sav­ings and in­vest­ment. In­vest­ing means putting your mon­ey in a place where it can grow and in­crease in val­ue. This is not a daunt­ing process and not as in­tim­i­dat­ing as it may seem for some," she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mitchell, this in­vest­ing was the by-prod­uct of grow­ing eq­ui­ty in the work­place.

"I think as the world of work is ex­pand­ing and we women are in­creas­ing our earn­ing and salary po­ten­tial, we are be­com­ing an eq­ui­table force to reck­on with in the work­place. Women are now CEOs and Di­rec­tors on Boards, as well as own­ing shares in com­pa­nies. We are be­com­ing more and more em­pow­ered and are mov­ing away from the com­fort of sav­ings and putting our mon­ey to work just as hard for us as we are work­ing hard to earn it," said Mitchell.

She not­ed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic al­so played a role in in­creas­ing in­ter­est in in­vest­ments as it en­cour­aged more peo­ple to seek al­ter­na­tive op­tions of cash flow and for fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty.

"The pan­dem­ic brought with it vast un­cer­tain­ty, and gen­er­al­ly, every­one sought to se­cure them­selves in some way while tak­ing ad­van­tage of mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties that came with the pan­dem­ic—us­ing in­vest­ment as one of the means to do so," said Mitchell.

The TTSE is hap­py to un­der­take this ini­tia­tive, which is held in part­ner­ship with the UN Women Caribbean, IDB In­vest and Women Lead­ers with­in the In­dus­try, and is geared to­wards build­ing on that mo­men­tum of en­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ing. It was tied in­to its 2023 Ring the Bell for Gen­der Equal­i­ty Cam­paign for the re­cent cel­e­bra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day.

The fi­nan­cial eq­ui­ty cam­paign will fea­ture sev­er­al women who have gar­nered suc­cess through stock mar­ket in­vest­ment, shar­ing their sto­ries and knowl­edge in a bid to en­cour­age fur­ther in­vest­ment.

"This cam­paign, which would be pub­lished through a se­ries of videos on our dig­i­tal plat­forms through­out the months of March and April, has al­lowed us to part­ner not on­ly with these or­ga­ni­za­tions, but with a few of the women in lead­er­ship with­in our in­dus­try, who im­part their knowl­edge on in­vest­ing and fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy.” said Mitchell.

She is­sued an in­vi­ta­tion to women:

“I would en­cour­age women in lead­er­ship to share their knowl­edge on be­ing fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent, with an ef­fort to en­cour­age oth­er women."

Mitchell ex­plained this would be one of the means of achiev­ing fi­nan­cial eq­ui­ty for women, which she points out is more than sim­ply earn­ing an eq­ui­table salary—it al­so means hav­ing equal ac­cess to av­enues for gen­er­at­ing wealth.

"Fi­nan­cial eq­ui­ty means pro­vid­ing your­self with the same op­por­tu­ni­ties so that you can build wealth for your­self in­de­pen­dent­ly,” she stat­ed.

"We are in a glob­al ris­ing in­ter­est rate en­vi­ron­ment that has been ac­cel­er­at­ed by the re­cent glob­al events such as the pan­dem­ic en­vi­ron­ment, the Rus­sia-Ukraine war and a num­ber of oth­er ad­verse mar­ket events, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket pres­sures. So you would see that in­ter­est rates are in­creas­ing, as well as in­fla­tion. If you have a sav­ings ac­count that is giv­ing you a lev­el of in­ter­est that is low­er than in­fla­tion, you find the re­turn on your sav­ings is ac­tu­al­ly neg­a­tive, “Mitchell ex­plained.

"You should al­ways seek to find an in­vest­ment that pays a rate that's high­er than the in­fla­tion rate," the TTSE CEO ad­vised. "You may not achieve this with a sav­ings ac­count. You have to in­vest in mar­ket-dri­ven in­vest­ments and most of the time that's linked to the stock mar­ket. So in or­der for you to beat in­fla­tion or in or­der for you to en­sure that you are not gen­er­at­ing neg­a­tive re­turns on your sav­ings, you need to in­vest in an in­stru­ment that pro­vides a re­turn that's high­er than the in­fla­tion rate."

The TTSE CEO al­so was hope­ful that this cam­paign would dis­pel scep­ti­cism some may have about the in­vest­ment mar­ket and in­stead would fos­ter a new cul­ture of in­vest­ment among women who now com­mand a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the work­force.

"Let us not build this fear around in­vest­ments and the stock mar­ket," she urged. "Let us be open to lis­ten­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing the ad­vice from oth­er women who are will­ing to im­part their knowl­edge, and let us take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our own fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence by be­ing will­ing to just lis­ten."