Kanak Jain did not let his initial failure hold him back from success. Pallabika Ganguly tells you the story of how Kanak has become one of the most respected IFAs in the East
Kanak Jain, a Kolkata based IFA always aspired to be a CA but fate had other plans.
His entry into the financial market goes back to 2001 when he failed to clear CA finals even after five attempts. At that time he was working with PWC as a management trainee.
After leaving the audit firm, he was weighing his career options. Then one day, out of the blue, one of his friends asked him to join ICICI Life Insurance training as he had to achieve a target of training 30 agents and he had been able to marshal 29 only.
So while Jain was not interested in insurance, he attended the training to bail out his friend. After completing the training, he received a call from ICICI asking him to sell policies. Kanak was a little surprised as he never wanted to get into insurance selling and did not have any client base. So, he decided to buy a ‘ICICI Life save and protect plan’ policy for himself to get rid of this hassle of selling policies.
But the story does not end here. Next month again, he got a call from ICICI stating that he has become an agent for the company and has to sell policies. “I took the same policy for my sister for 30 years and we are still continuing it,” says Kanak. Later, the insurer called the agents to their Kolkata office and asked them to list down 100 names who could be potential customers.
Kanak immediately listed down names of all his friends, neighbors and relatives. He then started meeting and calling them. Most of his relatives were shocked to see him in an agent’s role and they called up his father cautioning him that there was no future in this business. “My relatives advised my father that CA is a respected profession and I should stick to it,” recalls Kanak.
Out of 100 names Kanak could convert only one into his client and that was none other than his sister. After meeting so many people, Kanak had started developing interest in his profession and took it as a challenge to sell policies. He decided to make cold calls on people. He paid Rs. 100 to a water purifier agent to get his client list. He was able to get a few meetings by calling up people from the list. He even stood on the streets of Kolkata hawking insurance policies. “I emphasized on the fact that they should give a chance to private players. My pitch used to be - you must have invested in LIC but it’s now the time to switch to private players to make a difference to your investments,” recalls Kanak.
He utilized the taxation knowledge acquired during his CA days to crack clients. “I used to meet clients to persuade them to buy policies. During those meetings, I used to guide them more on tax savings which in turn made them buy policies. I even advised them on gold investment and how to build their wealth. This helped to build my client base,” claims Kanak.
From zero clients in 2001, he was successful in turning 65 customers into clients after meeting over eleven hundred new people in one and half years. He built up this client base through cold calls only.
From zero to 65 clients was a tough job but Kanak laughs and reveals, “Good that out of 100 people I approached earlier, nobody turned into client. I might not have done justice to them at that point. But now all of them are my clients.”
Through his hard work, he soon qualified for ‘Star Club - International’ category for the year 2002 and was rewarded a trip to Singapore. During his trip, he met his mentor Raghunath Murty, a successful insurance and mutual fund agent in Malaysia. Raghu’s struggle story inspired Kanak to work hard. Raghu was a hamburger seller on the streets of Malaysia but after he became a financial advisor, his life changed completely. “Raghu’s story boosted my morale. I thought that I had good educational background and if I utilize it I can go far ahead in this profession,” reveals Kanak.
In 2002, ICICI AMC was also looking for agents to sell their products. Kanak empanelled with them and started selling their products also. He became the ‘Agency Champion of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance’ and ‘Agency Manager of Prudential ICICI Mutual Fund’ in July 2003.
Kanak formed his company Suskan Consultants in the year 2005 and hired one person to look after his back office work. The company has been able to grow its AUM from less than Rs 10 lakh to Rs 30 crore and employs eleven people now.
Most of his clients are entrepreneurs and businessmen. Kanak banks on referrals for expanding his client base. In the last five years, Kanak has been successful in expanding his business and today heads three companies.
Kanak believes in spreading financial literacy by encouraging people to enter the financial world. He also heads a training and consultancy firm and has trained over 5000 advisors over the last five years. He plans to train one lakh advisors in the next two years. He aims to create more IFAs to expand the coverage of financial products and serve the financial needs of people.
A very spiritual person, Kanak believes that motivation and determination can overcome all adversity. Today, he has made it his mission to help people overcome their fears and insecurities and make them realise their true potential. And why not? After all, he is a living example of how one can overcome setbacks and come out a winner!