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Savings and investments are often used interchangeably but have different purposes in your financial strategy. While savings are for financial emergencies and parked in extremely safe instruments where liquidity is easy, investments meet specific financial goals of a person.

While investments vary with the time horizon and investor’s risk appetite, the pandemic has called for a paradigm shift in the investment habits of people.

Here is what industry stakeholders had to say about this changing trend.

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) President and veteran banker Uday Kotak on March 10 called for channelling domestic savings into equities and the capital markets to reduce dependence on foreign funds.

“If you look at India’s saving rate, it has been declining in recent times, but it is still a pretty high savings rate. What is happening is that the bulk of the Indian savings, traditionally, have been risk-averse and a lot of that has been in more traditional sources and the amount of money and savings that has gone into equity risk have been relatively lower,” Kotak, the chief executive of Kotak Mahindra Bank, said at an event organised by the industry body.

In an interview to Money9 on February 16, Ashishkumar Chauhan, head of BSE said, “India is now the largest investing nation in the world after China. Today, the entire stock market is larger than the banking system. Stock markets are utilising capital of the nation efficiently than the banking sector. India is on a different trajectory and people are still learning to invest.”

DP Singh, CBO, SBI Mutual Fund is of the opinion that people have realised the importance of looking at other investment options other than bank deposits to counter rising costs.

“Indian investors have matured. They are now looking beyond fixed deposits and moving towards mutual fund investments,” said Singh.