With the spending on investor awareness now a becoming regulatory requirement, AMCs now have a sizeable corpus to reach out to investors. Based on the current size of the industry, AMCs have roughly Rs 165 crore at their disposal to spend on investor awareness giving such campaigns a scale and depth that is far greater than what they were doing earlier on their own. This is evident from the activities and campaigns of fund houses and the intensity will pick up further when the rest of the fund houses too roll out their campaigns.
So, what are the fund houses doing?
While many AMCs are looking at fresh campaigns, others are continuing with their time-tested activities, UTI being an example of the latter.
Back in 2010, UTI Mutual Fund partnered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs for its investor awareness drive called ‘Swantantra’. An integral part of the drive was the ‘UTI Knowledge Caravan’ which criss- crossed the country covering 48,000 km and 500 towns. As a part of the campaign, UTI publishes a full page covering basics on investments and savings in Times of India (TOI) every Tuesday. It has also come out with multi-language literature that explains investments in a simple jargon-free manner. The fund house now plans to hold investor camps across the country in partnership with TOI.
Equally ambitious has been the Reliance Mutual Fund drive where it claims to have reached out to two lakh investors in its investor awareness program with plans to reach out to five lakh investors in the next three years. RCAM has been conducting its investor awareness programme (IAP) through its learning academy EDGE since 2010..
Tata Mutual Fund plans to extend ‘Professor Simply Simple’ to explain financial jargon in an easy to understand way. “Through Professor Simply Simple (PSS), we have got something right and we plan to build on this success. We are therefore looking forward to taking this initiative further by creating engaging videos that would spread virally and reach out and influence more people. We also plan to create a separate micro-site to host the lessons and videos. We have now started receiving specific requests from distributors like HDFC Bank to provide them explanations of macro-economic concepts in PSS style. We are also planning to create engaging games which will have people participate and learn in an unobtrusive manner,” said Dharmendra Satapathy, Head-Marketing, Tata Mutual Fund.
Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund is using a combination of mass media campaigns with ground events. It has held these events in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat and plans to cover more states this year. The print campaign answers questions like ‘what happens if investment is done only during market peaks’ or ‘should an investor get in or get out of equity markets at a 20000 SENSEX level’ and highlights why mutual funds are the most convenient way to access equity markets. Besides print, the fund house will start its awareness campaign in online and outdoor media shortly.
“The investor awareness camps have reached out to over 3000 investors in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat and have received encouraging response. The investors have used this platform to voice their queries on mutual funds and have gone back being more aware of how to use mutual funds in their investment planning process,” said Kaiyomurz Daver, Vice President, Head – Marketing, Kotak Mutual Fund.
Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund has started a campaign called ‘Jaanoge tabhi toh Maanoge’ which aims to spread awareness about mutual funds. The 360 degree campaign has started with radio and a micro-site.
Interestingly, DSP BlackRock is targeting women with its ‘Winvestor’ initiative which aims to inspire women of all income levels and ages to empower themselves with financial knowledge. Women advisors called ‘Winvisor’ have volunteered for this initiative. The fund house conducts ‘Financial Planning Clinics’ where women investors discuss their personal financial queries with a ‘Winvisor’. The fund house has also tied up with CNBC TV 18 through ‘Sheconomy’, where Winvisors answer queries of women investors.
ICICI Prudential has launched ‘Invest Correctly’ to educate mutual fund investors through print, digital and outdoor media. The first campaign focused on using SIPs correctly. The second campaign was to create awareness on debt mutual funds. ICICI Pru has also started a new section on its website which is dedicated to investor education.
“We have ensured that we appeal to our investors by speaking to them in their regional language. While the print campaign reached 15 key cities, we have given further impetus to our initiative by partnering with distributors, who will anchor Investor Education Programs across all our 100 + branches. This is phase 1 of the investor education roll out,” says Raghav Iyengar, EVP & Head – Retail & Institutional Business, ICICI Prudential AMC.
Quantum Mutual Fund started an initiative called ‘Path to Profit’ where the senior management of Quantum Mutual Fund travelled by road to nine locations in south India. Through this initiative, the fund house spreads the message of safe investing to people through the basics of savings and mutual funds.
While there has been a spate of investor awareness initiatives undertaken by AMCs, do they really translate in to sales leads for AMCs? “Investor awareness programs are purely for educating investors. An educated customer translates as a lead to the financial industry. It is best left at the discretion of the individual investor to decide the brand. Our aim is to create awareness through these programs,” believes Sundeep Sikka, CEO, Reliance Mutual Fund.
Jimmy Patel, CEO, Quantum Mutual Fund says that such initiatives do generate leads in some way. “So far we obviously get a much better response in the metros like Chennai as compared to maybe a relatively smaller city like Salem. We do take down the names of people interested in investing and speak to them in case they wish to invest with Quantum. Yes it does generate leads in some sense, but the primary objective of such events is investor education and not leads generation.” said Jimmy.
