Investor awareness campaigns by AMCs have proved beneficial for investors, say AMCs; distributors are not too enthused
Mumbai: In a bid to spread awareness for mutual funds among investors, AMFI had directed fund houses to organize investor awareness programs throughout the country. The awareness campaigns, which started a year back, were aimed at improving awareness among investors regarding mutual fund products.
According to AMFI, 17 AMCs have so far conducted 643 investor awareness programs covering 115 cities, in FY11, which accounted for an impressive figure of 19,340 participants.
Aashish Somaiyaa, Retail Sales Head, ICICI Prudential MF, believes that these campaigns, being organized for almost a year now, have definitely helped the IFAs. “The entire focus is to assist IFAs by taking some burden off in terms of the amount of handholding and communication that they need to do to their investor. Considering the market behavior over the last 3 years and changes in the distribution landscape, it was felt that a large number of existing investors were going unattended and hence the focus on advising existing investors who were feeling trapped through the market turmoil,” says Somaiyaa.
The topics for these awareness programs are mainly related to professional investment advice, capital market behavior and addressing investor queries on mutual fund products. “The response is encouraging because we have seen investor turnout to be 15 to 20% on the invitations sent out. Investors who attended have asked questions on markets, their investment schemes and even questions with regards to our business models”, added Somaiyaa.
Sunil Subramaniam, Director-Sales & Marketing, Sundaram Mutual Fund, also agrees that these investor awareness campaigns help IFAs and distributors connect better with investors and spread awareness about mutual funds. “These campaigns are a part of an initiative to create awareness among the investors. They are not meant to yield any results, but to reach out to investors to make them more aware about mutual funds. These campaigns have definitely helped IFAs in communicating with their investors,” says Sunil.
But the IFAs have a different story to say. “The key for the success of such campaigns is to hold them regularly. It will take a long time for investors to gain something substantial from these campaigns”, said Mukesh Dedhia, Ghalla & Bhansali Securities Pvt ltd.
Distributors also feel that such measures will barely produce any effect in pulling people towards mutual funds. “Investors have not gained much out of these campaigns, as majority of the investors tend to avoid them. Also, investors get confused because they are overloaded with information,” said Sadashiv Phene, an IFA.
