Speaking about their entrances into the sector and respective lives in the Midlands, guests Paul Purewal, head of intermediary relations at Dudley Building Society, and Indie Bansi, mortgage and protection broker at Esher Mortgages, shared their experiences as British Asians, growing up in the UK, and how that shaped their identity in society today.
A welcoming society
Purewal’s full first name is Punbir and he was born in Coventry, where he continues to live today. His first job in financial services was with Coventry Building Society, where he’s worked for 24 years.
Growing up Sikh, he had long hair that he styled in a top knot until the age of 14, but because he did not know how to maintain it, he eventually cut it, adding it “probably gave me a different identity afterwards”.
Bansi is also from the Midlands, her full first name is Inderjeet, and she was named after former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi.
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Growing up, her parents were working most of the time, which meant Indie learned to be independent from a young age and was walking home from primary school at the age of seven, preparing her own food, and waiting for her older siblings to come home.
Purewal said the area he lived in growing up was not very diverse earlier in life, with few Indians living around him. Most of his friends growing up were white and “very welcoming” and enjoyed each other’s cultural food and practices.
“Even having eggs, chips and beans was sort of novel for me… because of that, I didn’t suffer much in terms of prejudice through local people,” he added.
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Defiant against bullies
While he did not experience this at school, Purewal had similar independence to Indie and used to go to the park alone, and there were occasions when his top knot made him stand out and a target of verbal abuse.
“One such time, I recall… it was a park really close to my grandparents’ house… There was a parent taking his child walking through the park with a dog. I could see him walking towards the direction I was at… as he got closer and closer, he looked at me and basically made racial remarks about how I looked. His kid didn’t actually say anything, he just sat and listened to his father making these remarks and I just froze at the top of this climbing frame, not knowing what to do, [I] didn’t want to get down because I was pretty scared. He walked off in the end. I waited long enough to be able to know he was far enough away for me to get down and run back home to tell my family,” Purewal said.
He said this was a memory that “unfortunately” stuck in his mind and hoped the man’s son did not follow in his father’s footsteps, adding that people had a responsibility to educate others in the right way.
Otherwise, Purewal said he did not have it too bad.
His brother also kept his hair long and went through similar experiences, including one instance where an older child tried to kick his top knot off his head while on the bus. Purewal was not around at the time, but the next day, the same child said something to Purewal’s cousin in his presence, and he stood up to him and “stopped it in that instance” with a fight off the bus.
Bansi said school was fine; she was one of a few children of colour in a predominantly white school. No one was outwardly racist, but she could sense she was treated differently.
“That wasn’t actually the children, it was more so the teachers,” she added. “That would be because they would say things like we are different to the other kids.”
“They didn’t necessarily say something, but we could feel it from them,” Bansi said.
Her dad used to take her out of school for around 6-8 weeks at a time, and Bansi would hear the teachers complain about this but she said the experience was “probably far more than what we would have been taught at primary school”.
Similarly, she did not have many issues in secondary school, which was more diverse, but she did have incidents outside of school.
“I must have been about 12 or 13, and I was walking back from school, and there was a girl from another school, and she used the ‘p’ word.”
She told her brother what happened when she got home and he told her to stand up for herself, or the girl would think she could continue to behave that way.
Bansi said: “Second day, it happened again. I think that’s when I really realised that I was very different to other people. It did actually end in an altercation as well… it never happened again after that.”
Values suited to the workforce
Bansi said her childhood made her resilient when entering the workplace, because she was given a lot of responsibility and worked with her dad renovating his investment properties at a young age. Bansi said this might be where her love for property developed and where she learned how to work hard.
Purewal said he fell into financial services when he worked at a Co-op opposite a Coventry Building Society branch and regularly went to deposit money because he found the receptionist attractive and looked for an excuse to strike up a conversation.
One day, she told him there were jobs available at another branch, and Purewal had an interview, where the interviewers overlooked his lack of knowledge about mortgages.
“They gave me a chance; they saw something in me,” Purewal added. He said from there, his career progressed due to managers continuing to take a chance on him and him taking more opportunities.
“I’m really grateful to those people at the start,” he said, adding that it acted as a lesson for him to give others coming up a chance and look at the individual first.
Bansi got her start at the West Brom Building Society through a programme for students, armed with a desire for property but no experience in financial services.
After six years in a business development role, Bansi moved on from the mutual sector, taking with her the insight she gained from the brokers who ultimately helped her start her career in the profession and realise the opportunities available.
She felt helping people get onto the property ladder as a broker reflected her values as someone from the diverse community of the Midlands, adding, “even if I was able to help someone like people helped my dad get on the property ladder, I thought that’s actually a blessing… being from a Sikh background, it’s actually seva [a core Sikh value to carry out charitable service onto others].”
Current community tensions
Discussing the recent wave of people hanging St George’s and Union Jack flags up in public places, host Bharat Sagar asked how far society had come in being inclusive.
Bansi passes a roundabout regularly that has around 100 St George’s flags hung around it. She said that with Birmingham being so diverse, it made her realise she did not know the true opinions of the people around her.
“They’re trying to offend people, but actually, people are quite resilient and kind at heart, and a lot of people actually are not buying into this whole flag issue,” Bansi said.
She added that it had affected her personally, as there had been recent attacks on Sikh women in her local area.
“Because of the type of environment that we’re living in at the moment, it means I don’t go out for a walk on my own anymore,” Bansi said, adding that for the first time in her life, she was second-guessing her actions and where she went and felt the need to carry a panic alarm.
Purewal said as an England fan, he usually looked at the St George’s flag with a sense of pride, and when he saw the flags, he “tried to get into the individual’s mind as to what is it they’re trying to achieve”, adding that there were unintended consequences of raising the flag in protest at some decision made in the country.
He said he believed it was the minority trying to prey on the vulnerable.
Listen to the full episode, hosted by Bharat Sagar, ambassador at large at AE3 Media, with guests Paul Purewal, head of intermediary relations at Dudley Building Society, and Indie Bansi, mortgage and protection broker at Esher Mortgages.
