Raghav
Iyengar, EVP & Head – Retail & Institutional Business,
ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund talks about ICICI Prudential’s latest
investor awareness program, ‘Invest Correctly’.
Tell us about your investor awareness program - Invest correctly?
‘Invest correctly’ is an initiative from ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund to empower mutual fund investors with the right information necessary for their investments.
We believe that just like it is important to invest, it is equally crucial to invest correctly! And that is the simple genesis behind our initiative. Our concept of education has been to provide information that the investor will be able to act on rather than appreciate the same in a purely academic manner.
The current campaign is addressed towards investors - both existing and potential.
How many cities/towns are you planning to cover in your IAP?
The investor education initiative will be spread across 15 cities. This is phase 1 of the investor education roll out. Since our task is to maximize effective reach with the core target audience, we have identified key publications across each of these 15 markets as part of the plan.
Have you tied up with any associations/NGOs/individual trainers for these IAPs?
We maintain an active panel of trainers with whom we conduct programs on a regular basis. This includes a mix of people and organizations who can train in multiple languages and on topics ranging from technical to basic. We cater to the “Top 15” cities, as well as to “Beyond 15”. The idea is to find out ways to touch the smaller towns and cities where the material needs to be elementary.
What kind of activities have you planned? Would these IAPs be customized in regional languages?
Over the past couple of years we have maintained on ground presence within the investor community through various investor education initiatives. In our current initiative which is primarily being led by print and digital at this stage, we have ensured that we appeal to our investors by speaking to them in their regional languages. Our print campaign in Kolkata will be in Bengali while a similar campaign will run in Gujarati in Surat.
What kind of message will you spread in these awareness programs?
The objective of our campaign is to stay focused on certain key messages while at the same time keep it very simple. To begin with, we have identified 2-3 themes that we will be extending our investor education initiative on. For instance our existing creative ‘Need for the RIGHT SIP Amount’ speaks to the mass of investors who believe that just having an SIP is enough.
We want investors to simply ask themselves if the amount they are investing is in fact derived through a systematic approach or is simply based on what they can afford to spare.
Nearly 90% of all SIPs are below Rs. 5000. And we strongly believe and worry that most investors could be underinvested when it comes to their SIPs.
Which category of investors are you looking to target in your IAP?
Our current Investor education campaign on SIP speaks to investors across all income brackets throughout the country. It takes three universal life goals of planning an education, buying a house and working towards a golden retirement.
These goals and aspirations are relevant to most investors. The campaign speaks to the people planning for certain life goals and they should begin towards the realisation of these goals by first knowing the RIGHT SIP Amount to invest.
What kind of media vehicles are you using in your IAPs?
We are using a combination of media and tools such as calculators, presentations, videos to ensure that the required transition takes place in the investors mind.
We have created a tab on our website; you could find this @ www.icicipruamc.com/investcorrectly. This tab is dedicated to investor education and helps investors find answers to their investment queries.
The initial response for the tab has been overwhelming; we have seen nearly a 50% increase in the visitors to the website post the campaign. Our effort will be to maintain this level of engagement with the investors and continue to serve relevant content to them.
