SHE KNOWS what the milk costs this week. She knows which month the school fees fall due, when the electricity bill will spike, how far the salary can be stretched, and which cousin’s wedding will quietly rearrange the next quarter. Ask her about the fixed deposits, the term policy, the demat account or the will — and the room often goes quiet.

No national survey measures this particular silence, so it would be dishonest to pin a single percentage on it. But the data that surround it — on financial literacy, insurance ownership, wills and widowhood — all point the same way. This article sets out what that data shows, what the silence costs, who pays, and what a family can do about it in thirty days.

I

THE PARADOX

The household CFO who has never seen the balance sheet

Indian women are not outsiders to money. They hold about 40% of all bank deposits, up from 34% in March 2020, and made up 26.3% of unique individual mutual fund investors in December 2025. Their mutual fund assets have more than tripled in five years, to ₹17.86 lakh crore.

Participation, however, is not the same as visibility. In the National Centre for Financial Education’s survey, 29% of men but only 21% of women were found financially literate, a gap the AMFI–Crisil women’s investing report flags as needing targeted action. And holding something on paper is not the same as knowing about it: one industry study summarised by Outlook Money found that, in many households, policies are bought for women rather than by them — leaving them without awareness of the cover or how to claim it.

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Managing the money is not the same as being shown the money.

II

A SIMPLE TEST

Four questions she should be able to answer tonight

Try this without asking anyone. Close the door, take a pen, and see how far you get.

01 What insurance exists?

Life, health, motor, home — which insurer, which policy number, what cover, which premium date, and who is named as nominee.

02 Where are the investments?

Bank and post-office deposits, mutual funds, shares and the demat account, PPF, EPF or NPS, gold, property — and which login, folio or account number holds each.

03 Does a will exist?

If so, where is it kept, who is the executor, and does she know what it says?

04 Do the nominees match the will?

Nominees on every account and policy, kept current after each marriage, birth or death in the family.

If two of the four draw a blank, she is in very good company. She is also exposed.

III

THE NUMBERS

What the data says about the silence

Three figures frame the problem.

FIGURE 1   ·   THE GENDER GAP IN KNOWLEDGE AND COVER

Insurance. Women accounted for 34.2% of new individual life policies in 2022–23, according to IRDAI’s annual report — roughly a third. A 2025 industry study reported that just 19% of women hold life insurance in their own name against 49% of men, and that only 22% of women have ever filed a health insurance claim themselves. That study was conducted by an insurance broker, so treat its numbers as indicative rather than official.

Wills. A peer-reviewed study of Indian survey data opens from the premise that roughly 80% of Indians die without a last will. Surveys quote higher and lower figures, but every estimate we found describes a small minority who have written one.

Widowhood. Census 2011 counted about 4.3 crore widowed women. Nearly half — 48% — of women aged 60 and above were widows, against 15% of men. Nor is widowhood only a late-life event: 4.6% of women aged 35–39 and 10.8% of those aged 45–49 were widowed.

IV

THE COST

What the silence actually costs

Money that goes missing. Across banks, insurers and mutual funds, more than ₹73,000 crore lay unclaimed in early 2026: ₹60,518 crore moved by public sector banks to the RBI’s Depositor Education and Awareness Fund, ₹8,973.89 crore with insurers and ₹3,749.34 crore in mutual funds. A nationwide campaign in late 2025 returned ₹5,777 crore across 22.95 lakh claims — proof that money can come home, and a reminder that most of it has not.

A nominee is not an owner. Many families assume the person named on the form inherits. In law, nominees are generally representatives who receive the money and pass it to the legal heirs; they are not its owners. A Delhi High Court ruling made the same point in a succession dispute: nomination is not a will. The rules differ by asset, so each one must be checked.

Without a will, the law decides. For Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 governs. A widow is one of several Class I heirs and shares equally with the children and the deceased’s mother, so she may not inherit the entire estate she assumed was hers. Other communities follow their own personal laws. Banks, insurers and registrars often ask heirs to produce a legal heir certificate or a succession certificate before releasing assets.

Decisions made in grief. Perhaps the least visible cost: a bereaved woman, often under pressure from relatives and without a map of the accounts, must make large decisions in the first weeks, when she is least able to.

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The price of silence is paid by the person least prepared to pay it.

V

WHO PAYS

The ones left holding the file

The widow pays first. She is usually asked to reconstruct, from receipts and half-memories, what the family owned — while also managing the funeral, the children and the paperwork.

Older women pay longest. Census 2011 figures compiled for one study show that 76.9% of women aged 60 and above were non-workers, against 39.8% of men. For them, savings, pensions and insurance — not wages — fund the rest of life. If those assets are unknown, frozen or in dispute, there is no income to fall back on.

Children and ageing parents pay too: school fees, medical bills and loan instalments do not pause for probate. And younger widows, in their thirties and forties, face the same maze with the added weight of raising a family on a single income.

VI

GOOD NEWS

The rules are changing in her favour

More nominees, more clarity. From 1 November 2025, customers can name up to four nominees for bank accounts, articles in safe custody and lockers, with shares allocated at once or in order of succession.

A search engine for forgotten money. RBI’s UDGAM portal lets users search for unclaimed deposits across participating banks — about 30 at present. It only searches; any claim has to go through the bank itself.

Easier mutual fund claims. SEBI has reduced the paperwork for mutual fund claims of up to ₹5 lakh and asked fund houses to run dedicated help desks.

These reforms help only the family that knows what it owns. Which brings us to the work.

VII

THE PLAN

Thirty days to a family money map

WEEK 1 Gather. Create one notebook or one locked digital folder. List every bank account, deposit, policy, demat or mutual fund folio, loan, locker and property paper. Search for forgotten deposits on the UDGAM portal.

WEEK 2 Insure. For each policy, record the insurer, number, sum assured, premium date and nominee. Check whether every earner — and every caregiver whose work the family would have to replace — has adequate cover.

WEEK 3 Nominate. Review nominees on every account, and use the new multiple-nominee facility where it makes sense. Remember the rule of thumb: a nominee collects; a will decides.

WEEK 4 Write. Draft a will with a lawyer or a reputable will-writing service. List the assets, appoint an executor, name the beneficiaries, and sign before two witnesses who are not beneficiaries. Keep it where trusted people can find it, and tell them it exists.

Then repeat the exercise once a year, on a date that is easy to remember. A birthday works. So does Diwali.

VIII

THE CONVERSATION

How to begin without it feeling like an accusation

The hardest step is the first sentence. Frame the exercise as teamwork rather than distrust, and keep it short.

If you are the one managing the budget: “I’d like us to spend one evening going through everything together. Nothing is wrong. I just want to be useful if something ever is.”

If you are the one who handles the investments: “Let’s put it all in one file and sit down with it twice a year. I want you to know it as well as I do.”

IX

WHERE TO BEGIN

Understanding the money starts with some of it in your name

Reading a statement is easier when you have opened the account yourself. At Brokerage Free Investments, a Zerodha Authorised Person since 2012, we help first-time investors — many of them women who have run a household for years — open a demat and trading account, understand direct mutual funds, and learn the basics through free stock market training, with human support by phone and at branches across Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Bring the four questions from this article. Leave with a first account in your own name, nominees you chose deliberately, and a clearer picture of what the family owns.

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Open the conversation. Then open an account in your own name.

BROKERAGE FREE INVESTMENTS   →

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DISCLOSURE & DISCLAIMER   Brokerage Free is an Authorised Person of Zerodha Broking Ltd. (SEBI Reg. No. INZ000031633; NSE AP Reg. No. AP251600062). Investments in securities markets are subject to market risks; read all related documents carefully before investing. This article is for general information only and is not legal, tax or investment advice. Succession and nomination rules vary by religion, asset type and circumstance; please consult a qualified lawyer or adviser for your situation. Statistics are drawn from published reports by AMFI–Crisil, IRDAI, the Census of India, the Press Information Bureau and others, as named in the text.