Authors: Mataprasad Chaurasia
Abstract: The past five years have produced one of the fastest demographic shifts in the history of retail investing: tens of millions of people under 30 have opened their first brokerage or demat account, most of them through a mobile app rather than a bank branch or broker's office. This paper examines that shift at the intersection of three forces — investor behaviour, financial technology, and financial mathematics — drawing on primary market data (NSE, RBI, SEBI), international survey research (the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, CFA Institute, TIAA Institute-GFLEC, Gemini, YouGov, IPX1031), and peer-reviewed academic literature. Using secondary-data analysis, the study documents how young investors are entering markets earlier than any prior generation, disproportionately through low-cost, app-based fintech platforms, while simultaneously scoring lowest of any generation on standardised tests of financial literacy. A worked compound-interest illustration then quantifies what this “literacy-behaviour gap” is worth in practice. The paper concludes that fintech has solved the problem of market access far faster than anyone — fintech included — has solved the problem of financial education, and it proposes concrete, evidence-based measures for investors, platforms, and policymakers to close that gap.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22895860
