Monika Halan

Monika Halan is a trusted personal finance writer, speaker, and author who helps families get their money decisions right. She is the founder of Dhan Chakra Financial Education and the best-selling author of Let’s Talk Money (Harper Collins, 2018). The Hindi translation Baat Paise Ki was released in December 2020. The book has been translated into Marathi and Punjabi. Her first book Seven Steps to Financial Freedom was published by Macmillan in 2005. She is an Adjunct Professor both at the National Institute of Securities Markets, A SEBI-founded educational institution and at the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, a Ministry of Corporate Affairs think tank. She is a regular speaker on financial literacy, regulation, inclusion, and consumer issues in retail finance. She has a Masters in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and a Masters in Journalism Studies from the College of Cardiff, University of Wales, UK. She has worked across various media organisations in India, including Mint, The Economic Times and The Indian Express, and was Editor at Outlook Money. She has run four successful TV series around personal finance on NDTV, Zee, and Bloomberg India.

Monika has public policy experience as Member of the Task Force set up by the Government of India to put in place the Financial Redressal Agency, the Sebi Mutual Fund Advisory Committee from 2009 to 2021, the Ministry of Finance Committee on Incentives (Bose Committee), and as Advisor to the Swarup Committee in 2009.

She has four published academic papers in the field of household finance.

• Impact of Information Disclosure on Consumer Behaviour: Case of ATI Bonds: Niyati Agrawal, Monami Dasgupta, Monika Halan, Misha Sharma, Madhu Srinivas, Dvara Research (2021).
• Regulating consumer finance: Do disclosures matter? The case of life insurance: Monika Halan and Renuka Sane, NIPFP Working Paper Series (2017).
• Misled and mis-sold: financial misbehaviour by retail banks?: Monika Halan and Renuka Sane, Journal of Comparative Economics,2017.
• The case of the missing billions: estimating losses to customers due to mis-sold life insurance policies: Monika Halan, Renuka Sane, Susan Thomas, Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 2014.

She was a Director on the Financial Planning Standards Board India and is a Member of the Editor’s Guild. She is based in New Delhi and was chosen as a Yale World Fellow in 2011. She tweets at @monikahalan.