Deepak Chhabria, Founder of Axiom Financial Services caters exclusively
to HNIs and ultra HNIs. He talks to Cafemutual about what it takes to cater to HNIs
and shares his interesting experience in the financial advisory field.
What
inspired you to get into financial advisory?
I was always attracted to equity markets and had
developed a keen interest in equity investing right from my college days way back
in 1985-86. Those were the days when the financial sector was just coming
into the limelight. I followed my dream and joined a broking house at the
Bangalore Stock Exchange. This firm was the largest broking house in South
India and was the only broking house doing institutional deals for UTI, LIC and
GIC etc. This gave me tremendous exposure and experience.
What is
your background? What were you doing before venturing into financial advisory?
I am a Commerce Graduate and PGDM from St Joseph's
College, a leading institution in Bangalore. After completing my education, I
entered broking and financial services industry and have never found any reason
to look elsewhere.
How were
the initial days of your business? What kind of challenges did you face? How did
you overcome them?
The initial days were full of learning and excitement.
Meeting and acquiring new clients, understanding their financial needs,
concerns and offering them our services, hand-holding them in times of crisis
was very satisfying. Veering them away from tested products like Bank FDs, gold
etc was indeed time consuming and at times even frustrating. However, we
realized that once clients are given the right explanation supported by solid
data, they were quite amenable.
How did
you acquire clients?
Our client acquisition has been only through
referrals. Over the years, the business model has evolved and today we are
fully focused on HNI and ultra HNI clients. Our experience has been
that satisfied and happy clients will definitely provide you with quality
referrals and that too from similar category. At the same time, we also focus
on client retention; we have hardly lost any meaningful client over these
years. It is said that acquiring new clients involves 20 times more effort than
retaining existing clients.
What are the unique goals and expectations of HNIs?
HNIs unlike other investors are more concerned about post tax returns and managing their existing assets well. They tend to focus on real returns considering the high inflation rates in our country. Minor goals do not matter to them, since their cash flows are strong and steady. While their outlook is more positive, they are more discerning and demanding in terms of products and services.
Since we primarily handle HNIs and ultra HNIs, our
assets are spread over asset classes and products. HNIs tend to be more open
and comfortable with investing in PMS and alternate products as their risk
appetite is much higher.
Tell us
about your business model? What kind of services are you offering?
We offer the entire gamut of financial products to
our clients, from financial planning to wealth management. We cater to 130 HNI
and ultra HNI clients with a team size of seven.
Our offering is based on suitability and need analysis;
there is no compulsion that the client has to necessarily use all our services.
In our experience, starting clients with simple investment products and then
graduating them to the rest of the services has worked well.
What was
your biggest learning as a financial advisor?
There is never a dull day; you learn something new everyday. But, my key takeaway is that people are genuinely concerned about their family's financial security and wellbeing. They are also looking for help and guidance in these matters. I have also realized that clients are appreciative of the contribution of their financial advisors.
Please
share a memorable moment in your financial advisory journey
There have been many such moments when you feel
proud that you have contributed to someone's financial wellbeing. I
specifically recollect an incident, when an HNI client introduced me to his
guests at the Gruhapravesh of their
luxurious home saying "This was possible because of him".
Apart
from mutual funds, what are the business services you are offering?
As mentioned, we deal with the entire basket of
financial products. I am personally product agnostic, to me client need and
appropriateness of the product is important. In addition to financial products,
we also offer them our services on real estate investing. We have also
concluded few deals on angel investing as well.
What is
your key to success?
If I need to sum it up in a single sentence - being on the side of my client. In these times, when everyone is under the needle of suspicion, safeguarding client interest can provide long term success.