Vishal and Shalini Dhawan only enrol clients who give them at least Rs. 50 lakh of portfolio to manage. Today they cater to 200 families.
Vishal Dhawan, who worked with ICICI Bank & ABN Amro Bank ventured into financial advisory business by setting up ‘Plan Ahead Wealth Advisors’ in 2003. While both insurance and mutual fund sectors had evolved, Vishal sensed a big opportunity for a client focused practice. His wife, Shalini also joined him after quitting her job at Ernst & Young.
Starting without any clients from their earlier jobs, the first four years of their practice saw a slow start as they relied only on referrals and leads they attracted by writing for niche groups in local newsletters. Their business picked up from 2008 after Vishal started making an appearance on business channels like Bloomberg UTV and CNBC TV18 in their personal finance shows. Vishal also started writing regularly for pink dailies. He also reached out to import/export community by contributing articles to Exim India (a B2B publishing group focused on shipping, ports, maritime trade, imports and exports) newsletters. Vishal also maintains a blog where he shares his perspective about the developments in the financial markets.
Practice
Vishal says that since the very beginning his focus was on financial planning and not just distribution. His early adoption of financial planning concepts helped his clients sail through the crisis that shook the markets in 2008. “Everything from equities, real estate to gold was going up from 2003. Concepts like asset allocation, portfolio rebalancing looked very academic at that time. Booking profits looked foolish because the markets only went up. A lot of our clients realized only in 2008 that risk mitigation is important, a practice which we have always followed,” recalls Vishal.
Business Model
Most of his clients have enrolled for financial planning. Vishal has set a minimum benchmark for the portfolio size at Rs. 50 lakh. Most of his clients who come to him for investment products eventually end up enrolling for comprehensive financial planning.
Their value proposition is clear - “Add meaning to client’s finances” and “add time to client’s life”. They try to see if they can add to these two aspects in a client’s life before taking them on board.
Needless to say, both Vishal and Shalini charge all their clients who have enrolled for investor advisory, post the entry load ban. They parted ways with those who didn’t pay up.
Recently Plan Ahead was nominated for the ‘CNBC TV18 Financial Advisor Awards 2012’. The husband-wife duo has Rs. 150 crore assets under advisory across various products.
The Dhawan family is yet another example of professionals leaving behind cushy jobs to don advisor’s hat. From here on, their aim is to scale up business through online marketing activities like social media and internet marketing. They want to reach out to a larger audience but do not want to derail their current business model.