Bharat Shah, Executive Director, ASK Asset & Wealth Management Group, emphasised the importance of wealth creation in his address at Outlook Money’s 40After40 Retirement Expo, attended by various industry leaders at Mumbai’s Jio Convention Center on Tuesday. Shah stressed that building wealth is not to nurture the ego, but one must do it because it liberates and gives the freedom of choice. Shah said, “Not only guarding wealth but building and nurturing it to the next level is everyone’s sacred duty.”

He advises people to act as trustees, even for their own money. “The money with you should be treated with the same care and concern as if you are managing it for someone else,” he added.

Also Read: Quality Over Speed: India’s Quest For A $5 Trillion Economy

Shah pointed out the immense wealth-building opportunities in the market. Referring to wealth-building potential, he drew attention to an article he wrote five years ago titled “The Golden Decade of India”. “If I had to write it today, I would say golden decades of it. Decades. So I’ll make it a plural rather than singular that I wrote then,” he emphasised.

“We are at a cusp of the greatest economic expansion this country has ever witnessed, not just compared to her own history; it will be so compared to any comparable, relevant example anywhere in the world in the coming period. Therefore, the rate of economic expansion will be one of the most defining features of what we will witness,” said Shah.

Also Read: Pension Must Be Part Of Saving Portfolio’s Indian Thali For Wholesome Meal: Deepak Mohanty, PFRDA Chairman

He highlighted factors more important than the growth rate. These are predictability, durability and quality of economic growth. “When something is predictable, it acquires a greater value. What is predictable reduces uncertainty. Reducing uncertainty, reduces risk, and what reduces risk becomes more valuable today because the value of a business is nothing but pondering over probability into the future and the risk reduction directly impacts improving the value. So, the first important change compared to the past is the predictability of growth,” he said.

But when reforms are deep, they keep getting created as a logical linkage to each other. Shah cited examples of Jan Dhan Bank accounts and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). He said each of these reforms is vital, but put together, they create a larger impact “because that’s what the full completeness of the system is all about”.

Also read: As In Cricket, Need To Think About Your Retirement From The First Over: IDFC FIRST Bank CEO Vaidyanathan

“Therefore, when reforms are many, deep, and interconnected, the outcome is not merely an arithmetic total but a geometric multiplication, and you build an ecosystem. We are at the cusp of somewhere around that, where the ecosystem geometrically creates a force multiplier,” Shah added.