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Kolkata MFDs Hitesh Jain and Utkarsh Dubey of Finomatic Fintech Services, Kolkata won the prestigious Sanjeevani Award under Real Bharat Award for bringing in more investors from small cities and rural areas. Sanjeevani awards is a joint initiative of Axis Mutual Fund and Cafemutual to recognize untiring efforts of MFDs.
Despite operating from a metro city, more than 55% of the total clients of Finomatic Fintech Services are from small cities and rural areas. They acquired clients from small cities and rural areas of West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
This journey started when Hitesh and Utkarsh observed that that majority of the population stays in B-30 cities but they only contributed 18% of the total AUM to the MF industry. Moreover, they realized that there are lot of MFDs to service investors in big cities but there is dearth of MFDs in B30 locations.
That is when Hitesh and Utkarsh started Finomatic Fintech Services in 2018. Utkarsh and Hitesh followed a B2B model where they reached out to insurance agents, postal agents, kirana owners and self-help groups as they have access to people. The MFD duo encouraged them to sell mutual funds by becoming sub distributors. They started holding training programs for them where they explained to them about earnings potential in mutual fund distribution business.
Talking to Cafemutual, Utkarsh said, “Right from NISM exam, sales training to handling different types of clients, we train our sub brokers on each and every aspect of the MF industry. We also hold quarterly and yearly learning events of sub brokers where we invite industry speakers to give them pep talk.”
They also conduct investor awareness programs for prospects of sub brokers to help them acquire clients.
Utkarsh also shared that there is lot of demand of regular income in rural areas. In fact, his company does a dedicated investment education program on benefits of SWP. He said, “Many people run small businesses or receive lumpsum money from farming. These investors need regular income.”
So far, they have created 600 new MFDs and manage AUM of over Rs 630 crore from 29,000 clients.
Talking about how the MF industry can increase penetration of mutual funds in small cities and towns, Utkarsh said that the industry should focus on adding more distributors to get clients from small counters. He said that people in rural areas are more comfortable dealing with someone they know. Secondly, AMFI should continue their efforts to educate people but about specific concepts like SWP.
Finally, he said that MFDs should be allowed to do IAPs especially in B30 locations.