Over 350 delegates comprising CEOs and senior AMC officials, advisers, national distributors, bankers, participated in the fifth edition of Cafemutual Confluence 2016 event held in Mumbai yesterday.
Themed ‘Today’s vision, Tomorrow’s reality’, the event was attended by some of the eminent speakers from India and abroad.
John Praveen, MD & Chief Investment Strategist of Prudential International Investment Advisers, USA delved on what factors contributed to the global rally in equities and bonds over the past 30 years and what lies ahead for the developed and emerging markets. He said that emerging markets are likely to enjoy higher returns due to expectations of strong GDP growth & rising profits, falling inflation & scope for rate cuts and PE expansion.
EY Cafemutual report on, ‘Mutual Funds: Ready for the next leap’ on the MF industry was also unveiled at the event.
With India adopting the gaming changing tax reform, the new GST tax regime will have implications for a wide range of industries, including financial services. Divyesh Lapsiwala, Tax partner, EY India gave a detailed presentation of the impact of GST on the mutual fund industry. He said that there will be significant changes in the manner in which revenue and expenses are captured and reported by AMCs. For instance, he said that under the Model GST Law, AMCs may need to obtain registrations in every state and comply with the tax payment, input credit and tax filing obligations.
Keeping with the theme, a panel discussion was conducted on ‘How do we shape the future?’ in which leading CEOs deliberated on the factors that will accelerate the growth of the industry. The panellists included Ashutosh Bishnoi, MD & CEO, Mahindra MF, N K Prasad, President & CEO, CAMS, Swarup Mohanty, CEO, Mirae Asset MF, Vikas Sachdeva, CEO, Edelweiss MF and D P Singh, ED & CMO of SBI MF. The panel was moderated by Abizer Diwanji of EY.
Noted journalist R. Jagannathan evaluated the mid-term performance of Modi government based on the policies and reforms introduced by the government over the last two years.
Various independent studies have revealed that investor awareness is still very low in India. On how IFAs and AMCs can overcome this hurdle, a panel comprising marketing heads of AMCs and brand/communication experts deliberated on the topic ‘Is investor awareness the magic bullet?’ The panel consisted of Karan Datta, CBO, Axis MF, Molly Kapoor, Head-Marketing, Birla Sun Life MF, Sandeep Walunj, CMO, Reliance Nippon Life MF, Karl Gomes, Chief Fanatic, Fanatics and Sourabh Mishra, independent brand consultant were the panellists.
Raj Raghunathan, Prof at University of Texas spoke on the topic, ‘Can money buy happiness?’ He said that we have a higher chance of mastering a skill if we focus on doing what we instinctively enjoy.
A panel of India’s top investment minds comprising Amit Tripathi, CIO-Debt, Reliance Nippon Life AMC, Anoop Bhaskar, Head-Equities, IDFC MF, Navneet Munot, ED & CIO, SBI MF, Prashant Jain, ED & CIO, HDFC MF and S Naren, ED & CIO, ICICI Pru MF shared their views on what lies ahead for the Indian markets. Neeraj Shah of ET Now moderated this panel.
The event was supported by Reliance MF (platinum partner) and Mirae Asset (gold partner). Canara Robeco MF, HDFC MF, Mahindra MF and SBI MF were the silver partners. EY and ET Now were the knowledge and media partners respectively.
The videos, photographs and presentations of speakers will be uploaded on www.cafemutualevents.com soon.
