On its first day, the CIF 2021 hosted 17 impeccable orators who addressed some of the most pertinent issues facing the MFD community. More than 2800 attendees joined the event on Day 1 to get an understanding on the post pandemic era and sustainable business practices.
Day 1 presented wider perspectives through a line-up of diverse speakers. They touched upon key subjects like the economy, setting up virtual offices, client engagement and business growth amongst others.
Here are Day 1 highlights.
Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India
Topic - State of the Indian economy and where it is headed
- In order to deal with the pandemic adopted a barbell strategy, i.e. the government worked towards preparing for the worst while stepping up their efforts towards the strengthening of the economy
- Increased spending mainly towards infrastructure to generate employment and trigger demand in other sectors like steel
- India must be flexible as an economy to be able to deal with the new changes, new technology
- Aim at privatization and not disinvestment
- The economy has picked up the momentum and should go back to normalcy soon. There may be some delay but the economy is continuing to march towards the $ 5 trillion mark
- The authorities are working towards simplifying the regulations and maintain transparency in decision making
Sunil Subramaniam, MD, Sundaram MF
Topic - Preparing for New Realities, New Possibilities
- The size of the scheme has no correlation with the performance of the scheme. It is crucial to keep yourself hedged and diversification is the key
- The pandemic forced digital transformation across the world. Today’s consumers are tech savvy and you can grow your business by expanding your customer base through digitalization
- It is the time to be a financial super market. You must take charge of your customer and focus on establishing quality relationship
- Build a brand by curating a webpage, twitter, video vlog
Kailash Kulkarni, CEO, L&T MF
Topic - Being a friend, philosopher & guide to your clients
- It is essential to understand the clients, their needs and temperament. Stay in touch virtually during the thick and thin
- Meetings should not be transactional. You can look at helping clients on the personal level to build long-term relationships.
- Organizing things for clients can strengthen relationships
- Set reasonable returns expectation and apprise them about risk parameters before starting relationship
Gajendra Kothari, MD & CEO, Etica wealth
Topic - How to set up your virtual office
- There exist three models for doing business, (1) All remote/virtual (2) Phygital and (3) Robo advisory
- As a cost-effective measure, you can start establishing a virtual set-up in collaboration with national distributors and tech platforms
- Invest in good quality gadgets - phone, headphone and routers supporting good bandwith. If working from home, have a designated place, which is well lit. Invest in a good quality desk and chair
- Artificial intelligence will not replace financial professionals but financials professionals using artificial intelligence can replace the professionals not using AI
- Some helpful tools: Zoom - For online meetings
- Grammarly - For writing content
- Canva - For designing
- Invideo - For creating videos
- Evernote - For taking notes
- Hunter.io - For searching e-mail ids
- Mail chimp - For sending e-mails
- Lastpass - For securing your passwords in one place
Raghav Iyengar, CBO, Axis MF
MFD Heroes Awards - recognizing selfless acts of heroism from the MFD community
Raghav presented the MFDs Heroes Award to MFDs who broke all barriers to serve the community. The event honored the exemplary service of four winners on Day 1.
- Mumbai MFD Nikhat Ashraf Mohamedy offered home-cooked meals to underprivileged people during the lockdown. She started cooking food for 150 people on her own to distribute it among them. Soon, her neighbours and friends joined her in this initiative and set up a group called Food- Ek Choti Si Asha (A ray of hope) to help underprivileged people.
- Nashik MFD Tushar (Manoj) Kulkarni started doing cremation of covid victims after receiving request from Nashik Police. After each cremation, he had to go to quarantine centres for three days for the safety of his family.
- It all started when Anulekha Verma came to know about an underprivileged school student who suffered a medical condition that could have caused permanent loss of eyesight. Anulekha not only paid Rs.45,000 for operation, she also fixed an appointment, met the doctor and took care of the student. Anulekha has also paid Rs.50, 000 as education fee of another bright student who would have had to otherwise discontinue her education due to financial constraint
- Munnavar Khan who works at the distribution firm Vision Advisory Services distributed ration packets and meals to underprivileged families and migrant workers during covid-19 pandemic. He pooled money with other like-minded people to fund ration packets for underprivileged families across the city. Recently, he distributed blankets when the entire North was under a cold wave
Anuj Kumar, President & CEO, CAMS
Topic - Mastering client acquisition in the ‘new normal’
- MFDs manage 20% of the total industry AUM
- Paper transactions declined from 80% in 2015 to 40% in 2020. 24% of new investors in 2019 were boarded through platforms/websites/apps, which increased to 42% in 2020. Also, interestingly 52% of the new investors are below the age of 35 thereby hinting at the need of prompt and tech enabled services for the millennials
- Untapped opportunities in the portfolio include - cross sell/up-sell, SIP retention, hyper-personalized solutions, digital experience
- Offer products and services MFDs should offer - e-KYC onboarding, multiple digital payment options, chatbots for self-services and one click investment
Swami Gyanvatsal, Motivational speaker and spiritual leader
Topic - Achieving success in the midst of opposing forces
- Opposing forces include - ideas not accepted by others, inability to complete projects in the past, unable to plan or make a good presentation, having a negative attitude, having an inferiority complex
- Attitude plays a bigger role than the available resources. Be a prosperity thinker and not poverty thinker
- You must be well equipped academically as well as professionally. This helps in achieving newer milestones
- Live and let live - refrain from indulging in petty politics and spread positivity. Never compromise on ethical practices and pray for success of self as well as others
Sunil Subramaniam, MD, Sundaram MF
Topic - How I grew my business - Inspiring stories of achievers (MFDs)
Amitabh Bachchan of the MF industry: Ahmedabad MFD Nitin Patel of FinFreedom 33 has made over 135 clients crorepati.
Mahendra Singh Dhoni of the MF industry: Despite hailing from small town, Jalgaon MFD Hitesh Kakkad of Moneyplus has clients across the country. From the beginning, he has been using technology to bring in newer perspectives in the ordinary course of business.
Mr. Swiggy of the MF Industry: MFD Achuthan Kutty hails from a small village of Thrissur district of Kerala. He has a novel way to sell mutual funds in rural areas through his ‘mobile’ office. For the last 30 years, he has been roaming around the villages in Thrissur district in his auto-rickshaw along with a driver for selling mutual funds and other financial products. Today, he manages AUA of over Rs.55 crore.
Jhansi ki Rani of the MF industry: Sapna Narang of Capital League Delhi entered the distribution business in 2003 after quitting HSBC Bank. She now heads all-women team of 16 women advisors and manages assets of Rs.1300 crore. She is the author of 'Investing is the New Cooking: A Woman's Guide to Wealth Creation'.
Danielle Howard, Wealth by Design, USA
Topic - Time to turn over a new leaf? - Changing the advisor-client conversations
- Move from ‘should to’ to ‘choose to’ conversations. Place your client in a stronger position by giving them the power to choose and not compelling them to do something. ‘I choose to save for the future’ rather than ‘You should save for the future’ helps to bring in a shift in the mindset as well as the conversations. This also makes way for a more mature conversation
- Help your client understand the tax implications, asset allocation, risk mitigation and build financial literacy
- There must be a repositioning of mindset as we do not sell only products but we sell peace of mind and financial health
