Winner of the UTI & CNBC TV18 Award for Best Financial Advisor (South Region), Pramod Kumar, CEO, Wealth Advisors, reveals its success secrets. Excerpts from the interview:

What’s your success mantra?

Our success is due to a combination of factors: a client-centric approach, a team which believes in that approach, long-term stakeholders who allow us to be client-centric and, most importantly, our clients who have supported us enormously.

What was the thought behind Wealth Advisors?

Wealth Advisors is the brainchild of our Founder-Director, Mr. Mahadevan Veeramony. He put together the founding team, for whom the primary motivation was the business and process of investment and advisory itself. We believed in the size of business opportunity; it provided enough scope to build a truly client-centric investment advisory firm.

What kind of challenges did you face in your initial days?

Each member of the founding team was highly experienced, having worked with established domestic firms and MNCs. Yet we needed to be oriented with working in a start-up organization. This meant setting up systems (backend, MIS, accounting, reporting) and process (research, advisory, client acquisition) among others from scratch. Our hands-on experience across multiple organizations helped enormously during this stage.

With regard to clients, we had to go the extra mile to prove that they would get the same level of service and attention that they received from a large bank or distributor. So we had to have a higher than normal interactions with touch points across the organization.

Which products did you sell initially?

From the very beginning, we were clear that we would be product and asset class agnostic. We focused and continue to focus on what we believed would be right for the client’s portfolio. We used mutual funds, bonds, ETFs and direct equity to construct better portfolios. For asset and liability protection, we used term plans, asset protection policies and liability policies.

What factors and opportunities helped you in this business?

We were fortunate to start the business in 2004. In hind sight this gave us a few years to establish a strong foundation which helped us withstand the global financial crisis and the new regulatory changes. We equipped ourselves with the systems and support structure required to face turbulent times.

In terms of opportunities, we have always believed that the size of the market coupled with the need for investment advisory and related services present a big opportunity. Some of the trends that we capitalized on include the changing attitude of NRIs towards investing in India; inter-generational wealth transfer; ESOP led wealth creation and SME business attracting outside capital etc.

What is your current AUM size and client-base?

We currently manage Rs. 5,000+ crore in assets across diverse asset classes, and work with about 120 clients in the institutional segment and about 500 families in the private wealth space.

What is your average ticket size?

In the private wealth space, we work with families having assets above Rs. 1 crore.

Are you charging a fee to your clients?

We have started charging our clients. We are a registered PMS provider, currently focusing on non-discretionary PMS. This allows us to charge the client a fee.

We are moving most of our clients in the private wealth space to this category.

Do you target any particular customer group?

We target clients in the private wealth space, who seek a portfolio return of between 10-15% over a long period, as it is optimal given our competence and fees charged. Of late, we are also targeting the NRI segment. We primarily operate in South India and are now expanding to Mumbai.

What marketing approach have you adopted to expand your business?

We have primarily grown by references. Building new clients is done through conducting seminars on investment concepts and strategies. We make sure that our initial interaction with clients is all about our approach to managing investments and the process involved, not just on investment products.

What according to you is the recipe of success in financial advisory business?

One needs to have a business model that is aligned with the interest of the client. At an organization level, you need to have a collaborative model where the combined knowledge and experience of the team is brought to the benefit of the client.

It is also important to work with clients whose portfolio expectations are in line with your competence. And, critically, the team should buy into the value system.

What are your future plans?

Our focus for the next few years would be to build a client-base in Mumbai and in the NRI segment, strengthen our base in South India, bring about more products to clients for portfolio diversification, increase the knowledge base of the firm and create access to alternate execution platforms.

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