Listen to this article
Kolkata MFD Piyush Rakhecha of Royal Eastern Financial Services recently delivered a session on mutual funds and financial freedom for visually impaired individuals at an event organized by Radio Udaan in Gurgaon.
Radio Udaan is a radio station for visually impaired individuals with over 50,000 listeners.
In this session, Piyush talked about how visually impaired individuals can achieve financial independence by investing in mutual funds.
Apart from discussing benefits of mutual funds, SIPs and so on, Piyush talked about practical aspects of mutual fund investing for visually impaired individuals like dealing with mismatch in signature, doing online transactions and more.
Piyush also highlighted benefits of some of the government schemes that can help visually impaired individuals like calling bank employees at home for the execution of transactions and reaching out to the Chief Commissioner of Persons with Disability (CCPD) for assistance.
Talking about challenges faced by such clients, Piyush said that people with special abilities or visual impairment require to save more to achieve financial freedom. Giving an example, he said that if a person with visual impairment wants to buy a car, he has to hire a driver as well, which increases the cost of ownership of the car.
Piyush said that the traditional financial roadmap does not factor in their unique requirements and hence, visually impaired individuals should reach out to experts like MFDs and financial advisors to deal with investments.
Overall, 200 visually impaired individuals attended his session.
Talking to Cafemutual, Piyush said that people with special abilities and visually impaired individuals offer good business potential to MFDs. “I have started focusing on visually impaired individuals from January 2024 itself. So far, I have acquired 15 clients who have started SIP with an average amount of Rs.40,000 per month. My target is to get at least 5 clients a month and for this, I will conduct knowledge sessions in all major cities.”
Piyush said that over 5 crore individuals are born with special abilities in India and 50 lakh of them are visually impaired.
Sharing his learnings, Piyush said, “Since I am one of them, they trust me with their money. But MFDs who want to cater to specially abled and visually impaired individuals require time and patience to understand their unique needs.”
Piyush manages AUM of Rs.40 crore in mutual funds and Rs.60 crore across all financial products. His monthly SIP book is Rs.65 lakh. He caters to over 400 clients.
