Hailing from a small village Champadanga, 60 km away from Kolkata, Tuhin Jana followed his father’s footsteps by entering financial advisory business ‘Jana Consultancy’ in 2001. Initially, the firm focussed on distributing insurance policies and post office schemes.
Attending a few MF conferences helped him understand the wealth creation opportunity offered by mutual funds. He realised that he could make his clients financially free, i.e the client accumulates at least 50 times his monthly expenses by investing in mutual funds. In 2006, his firm started offering mutual funds aggressively.
Talking with prospective clients initially, he realised that these individuals had no knowledge of capital markets; this prompted him to run investor education programs (IAPs) to educate investors and help them take an informed investment decision.
Organising an investor education program
To start with, Tuhin started approaching government offices to target their employees. As there were no large private industries or companies in the area, he started conducting IAPs for government employees including teachers and employees of post office and municipality. He took the help of his existing clients to approach the government officials. This is now a regular activity.
Once he gets entry, he personally invites government employees to attend his sessions on financial literacy. To ensure that he gets a good turnout, he sends multiple reminders through SMS and phone calls to these employees.
Keeping the message simple
To keep the session relatable, Tuhin customises the IAP depending on his target audience. He covers topics such as features of mutual funds and SIP and benefits of investing thorough the SIP route. Sharing historical market data, he helps the investors see that they can build a substantial corpus over the long term through small investments.
Post the session, he requests participants for feedback and referrals of people interested in attending IAPs.
Client conversion
On an average, Tuhin has seen a 30% conversion rate in these IAPs. As the session only talks about financial concepts, he discusses the investment options for each interested client individually after the program.
Moreover, Tuhin follows up with the participants after the event. Through such regular follow-up, he is able to convert the prospects to investors as he has observed that some clients start investing after attending a few IAPs.
Encouraging his clients to save for their financial goals
As majority of prospective clients are retail investors with small savings, he helps them identify their financial goals and advises them to start a SIP for the goal. A key goal that he encourages the client to aim for is financial freedom.
To ensure that his clients do not deviate from their investment path, he conducts multiple knowledge sessions for his clients in his office. In these sessions, he talks about markets, accumulating wealth and even spending wealth. On an average, he conducts four sessions every month for his existing clients.
Thanks to these sessions, these clients have continued their investments even in volatile markets. One such success story is of a vegetable vendor. Thanks to Tuhin’s advice and the client’s discipline, he has built a corpus of over Rs. 1 crore through SIP.
Educating clients before recommending schemes and continuously updating their knowledge through mini informative sessions has helped Tuhin have 2,500 clients and an AUM of Rs. 45.5 crore.
