In the concluding part of the interview with Cafemutual, Himanshu Vyapak, Deputy CEO, Reliance Mutual Fund shares his company’s plans to reach beyond the top 15 towns and more.
Which product category are you planning to expand?
We are currently looking at ETF category. First,
we are trying to complete our product basket in ETFs. We have filed for four new offer documents for equity
ETFs and are planning to file offer documents for fixed income ETFs too. We feel
it is the right time to promote this product in India as ETFs have started picking
up. Globally ETFs has been delivering 25 percent CAGR growth year-on-year for
over 10 years.
Apart from ETFs, which are the big opportunities for the industry?
Retirement solutions are an under-explored market and offer a huge opportunity for all of us. Investors are looking for these solutions. For instance, if we consider the employees in the unorganized sector, 90 percent of them only invest in pension funds. So, there is a huge market to explore.
How do you plan to expand in smaller towns - beyond top 15 towns? How much of your AUM in the equity funds comes from smaller towns?
We are planning to add 100 branches over the next three years in these locations. We are also trying to deepen our relation with our existing distributors in these areas. For enhancing our relation, our learning partner - EDGE is trying to connect with these distributors in a meaningful manner to re-energize them. We will be providing them technical, soft skill and market based training.
35 percent of our AUM comes from these cities.
How do you plan to rope in new cadre of distributors to sell mutual funds? Are you planning to provide any professional training to them?
We will be providing CPFA training to these distributors. NISM will be providing CPE training. However, we are also designing our own program along with a technical training on simplified products for this set of distributors.
Reliance had launched Any Time Money Card in July. What has been its response?
We have got a great response, as we currently have active one lakh sixty thousand members. We are receiving 1200 transactions daily through this card. People are using this card quite actively. This is a unique concept and we will be launching many such unique facilities in the future.
What is your view on direct plan?
It is too early to comment because we are still gauging investor’s reaction. We need to wait to know the exact impact. We feel that we might see some institutional investors taking the advantage of direct plan.
A retail investor like you and me will require an advisor to advise him on his overall portfolio. After all, how many investors have the time, bandwidth and understanding of the product to self-direct themselves?
