On September 12, Indo Thai Securities, an Indore based listed broking company activated 3,317 SIPs, with an average SIP ticket size of Rs. 1,700 through BSE Star platform. Most of these SIPs were in equity funds.
Idea for the SIP drive
Talking about their SIP drive, Sarthak Doshi, Vice President, Indo Thai Securities said that they were inspired to run a SIP drive from the ‘Mega SIP Carnival’ initiative of BSE Star MF. In this initiative, BSE Star MF encourages distributors to activate large number of SIPs in a single day by offering operational support for the drive. “After BSE officials gave us assurance that they would help us with the backend and operational tasks, we launched ‘Sampann Bharat Abhiyan’. Through the initiative, we encouraged people to invest in mutual funds through SIPs to achieve their long term financial goals such as retirement and children education.”
Overachieving SIP target
Doshi further shared that they started working on this campaign on Independence Day i.e. August 15. The team met 3000 odd clients of which over 20% (600 investors) agreed to participate in the drive. “Thanks to the overwhelming response, we managed to surpass our SIP target of 1,118 SIPs by a huge margin. In fact, we have initiated 3317 SIPs in a single day with each investors starting 5 to 6 new SIPs,” he said.
Success mantra
Explaining to Cafemutual that how his team convinced clients to participate in SIP drive, he said their team shared historical data to convince clients how they can create wealth through systematic investing. “We linked the SIPs to the client’s financial goals such as retirement, children’s education, foreign holiday etc. and encouraged them to start building a kitty for each goal. Moreover, we evaluated our clients’ current investments to help them understand whether the new SIPs will be able to help them achieve goal in the desired period. Also, clients who were investing in debt products were surprised to see the excess wealth generated (historically) by equity compared to debt over a long term. We also assessed their risk profile and understood their financial goals before suggesting schemes. On an average, we met each prospective client at least thrice to close a sale,” said Doshi.
The team also combed through their existing mutual fund investor database to identify inactive clients who had not increased their SIP investments in a while. “We helped these clients understand the need to increase their investments in proportion to their increase in income,” he added.
Ensuring that there were no operational glitches on the D-Day
To activate all SIPs smoothly on September 12, the team completed KYC and collected the application forms and cheques in advance from clients. On the SIP day, the team simply punched in the details on the BSE Star platform to activate the SIP. While some clients invested through cheques, majority of them invested online. Sarthak attributes the success of the Sampann Bharat Abhiyan to his team members and associates and the regional managers of BSE Star MF who motivated them and provided operational support.
