Can you take us through what we can expect from your forthcoming conference? What can advisers look forward to?
This is Next Advisors’ 3rd annual event, the first being the company launch in May 2011. In this annual event we will have a workshop for IFAs to gain perspective from leaders in finance and non-finance industries. Typically the event has a broad theme and 2-3 sub themes. This year's event's theme is Think Big!! Think Beyond!! and the sub themes are Bazaar (size of the opportunity), Jugad (maximising opportunity) and Naya Tarika (new tools to sustain growth).
Last year, we had the head of marketing from Mercedes Benz speaking on the virtues of managing client aspirations to sustain growth and this year we will have a brand custodian from TATA group to speak on the importance of trust for brand recall.
Tell us about the platform launched by Next Advisors. How many distributors have empanelled so far?
Next Advisors’ aspiration is to build a robust platform which can enable an IFA do risk profiling, research, transacting, reporting & monitoring in a seamless manner. The platform should have the capability to offer multiple products and services and should be product/service agnostic. Ideally an investor needs to get a delightful investing experience.
We have just launched online transacting, one of the legs of Next Advisors’ platform. This is a B2B offering, which enables the IFA to offer online transactions to his clients under his own ARN code. This is a white labeled solution, so the look & feel for the client for transacting remains the same as the IFA's website. Other salient features are:
- IFA can offer shopping cart facitlty or a wrap for buying a bunch of products in one go
- A single SIP mandate for multiple funds
- Seamless STPs
- Ability to charge fees
We also believe research plays an important role, especially since this business is moving from distribution to advisory based model. So we offer the best research products from time to time.
Till date 103 IFAs from 25 different locations from India have joined Next Advisors.
How is your platform different from other platforms? What are the benefits to distributors?
Next Advisors’ is a pure B2B offering and thus not a broker - sub broker model. Next Advisors is a ‘first of its kind’ platform which enables IFAs to retain brand identity, client ownership, IFA- principal relationship, and reduced credit risk. Our research shows that typically IFAs spend 60-70 % of their time in transacting and servicing. Next Advisors also helps IFAs substantially reduce this time and allows him to focus more on qualitative aspects of this business. IFAs gain an ability to offer 24 x 7 and 365 days service.
What are the most common objections and concerns voiced by IFAs in joining your platform? How are you addressing these issues?
Primarily very few IFAs are open to investing in their own business, mostly because of the prevailing negative sentiments in the markets these days.
We think we are very fortunate to have 105 IFAs repose faith in us and we will continue to educate many others. We strongly feel that just like in investing one needs to buy when markets are down, an IFA needs to adopt newer and better tools and sharpen his skill sets so that he is well prepared to maximise opportunities when they arrive.
It is normally believed that the technology for a platform such as yours is expensive. How have you created this technology?
We at Next Advisors’ have adopted the mutual fund model of pooling in the resources and entrusting the relevant jobs to relevant professionals. So, instead of re-inventing the wheel we will always work with best of breed of the service providers.
This model has helped us in distributing the cost of the products by offering it to many members and at the same time, maintain quality of product and services.
What will be the impact once the proposed MF Utility takes shape on your platform? Will it be complementary or competition or neutral to your platform?
MF Utility is a welcome step. This can add service efficiency to the overall mutual fund industry. The impact can at best be complementary or neutral to us, as we can learn and adopt few things from it and vice-versa.There is a huge requirement & space for many platforms, if we need to enhance penetration of financial products, especially to the younger generation of India and the rural populations - since both these pockets can have huge investable surpluses in the near future.
What is the roadmap for Next Advisors?
Globally if you see in the developed financial markets, especially in the distribution space, either there are exchanges or there are platforms. Our endeavour is to be one of the top platforms in India and the journey has just started.
Cafemutual is the Online Partner of Next Advisors 2013 Event.
