B15 cities are giving a tough competition to T15 cities in terms of asset growth. The latest AMFI data shows that B15 assets have recorded a growth of 33% in the calendar year 2016 as against 25% T15 cities.
Further, the data shows that B15 assets went up from Rs. 2.15 lakh crore in December 2015 to Rs. 2.86 lakh crore in December 2016.
In terms of composition of assets, B15 has a better balance of equity and debt assets. Close to 49% of the assets from B15 locations is in equity schemes. Interestingly, about 25% of assets held by individual investors are from the B15 locations.
Agra based Shifali Satsangee of FundsVedaa believes that B15 IFAs have understood the significance of creating positive first experience through asset allocation. She said, “As per my understanding, the advisors have matured over the years, bringing in clients into less volatile assets first, making them comfortable, and then gradually migrating them into higher volatile categories of assets, resulting in a happy investing experience and thereby increasing their average investment period.”
She further adds, “Advisors have also done a significant amount of job in terms of explaining the concepts of asset allocation and hence fixed income, as an asset class have seen better allocations along with traditional equity investing via SIPs.”
Agreeing with Satsangee, Aurangabad based Chandrakant Amritkar, says, “More people are awakening to the advantages of investing in mutual funds, thanks to extensive media coverage and innovative MF advertisements that educate people on alternate modes of investment.”
Another reason behind this trend is the shift in investor behaviour.
Amritkar has observed that investors have understood the advantages of debt funds over bank FDs. He attributes the steady fall in interest rates from traditional investing avenues like banks and post office as the tipping factor for the growth spurt.
“We are witnessing encouraging shift of investors moving into the fixed income space (ultra short/low duration/accrual) and balanced categories and investments in diversified/large cap equity schemes via SIP/STP route, which are bound to grow further in smaller cities,” said Shifali.
Nagpur based Ranjit Dani believes that B15 cities provide a good opportunities to IFAs to grow business. “There is still so much unexplored market here. Additionally, due to the good performance of the equity markets in 2014-2015, people were more confident to invest in the year 2015-2016. If this continues, IFAs will stand to benefit a lot from B15 cities.”
According to AMFI, the average ticket size of retail segment in B-15 towns was about Rs.76,000 while in T-15 cities, it was Rs.2.33 lakh as on December 2016.
