|
WF: At the outset heartiest congratulations on completing your 1000th investor education program! This is indeed a fantastic milestone.
K S Rao: Thank you Vijay for the opportunity to communicate with the wider distribution fraternity on Wealth Forum about our investor education and distributor training initiatives. Yes, it is indeed a proud moment for us, having completed our 1000th investor education program, thus reaching out to over 100,000 investors across the length and breadth of the country. One particular aspect of this entire initiative that is really gross root level is that in all the 10 districts we have adopted, we have so far reached out to over 10,000 students from 100 schools , building a basic level of awareness among them about money and finances.
WF : One of your flagship investor education programs is the My First Pay Cheque initiative. How is this coming along? What's the reach of this program?
K S Rao: My First Pay Cheque is a program that we started a year ago as an initiation into personal finance for the first time employees getting ready to receive their first pay cheque as well as for college students who are preparing to get into the earning stage from learning stage . We are today actively working with over 30 large corporates across the country, and reached out to over 12,000 new employees. In fact, My First Pay Cheque has been adopted by one corporate giant as part of its induction program for fresh recruits, and for this company, we have covered over 9,000 new employees at various locations across the country.
My First Pay Cheque is a two and half hour module embedded with highly engaging games and interactions. We introduce the audience to the 30-30 challenge of life - where they understand that the 30 years of productive work life they are entering into now, will also have to help them take care of 30 years of retired life. We help them understand the need to start planning early. The format is interactive and engaging - there is an audio visual, games, and quizzes. By taking cues from our past sessions , we are working on further improvements this module . I'm not surprised to see My First Pay Check is going to be Corporate buzz word in Personal Finance space.
WF: Do you also make them "investment ready" by helping them complete their KYC for mutual funds?
K S Rao: Absolutely Vijay. One big learning for all of us in the industry is how to make every contact into a contract! In most of the programs, we conduct them in conjunction with local IFAs and very often we also rope in CAMS who sets up a KYC desk at the event location. At some of the companies where we do the My First Pay Cheque program for all new recruits, we have a calendar agreed with the respective companies to have KYC help desk - one day each month . We set up a KYC desk with the help of CAMS to enable staff to complete their KYC formalities and become "investment ready".
WF: If an IFA wants to partner with you on My First Pay Cheque, what he should do, whom should he contact?
K S Rao: I request all IFAs who think they can organize this program in any company, to get in touch with the Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund Relationship Manager to take it forward. We are very keen to work together with our IFA partners to widen the reach of this program. We also publish the list of our programs on our website. In FY14-15, we conducted around 200 My First Pay Cheque programs. In FY 15-16, we intend to conduct over 500 sessions. Our IFA partners can come forward to work with us in reaching out to companies and colleges where they have a reach and contact with.
On the subject of working with IFAs, let me tell you - it is not restricted only to My First Pay Cheque. We have programs tailored for middle management , senior management & executives under the Janooge Tabhi Toh Maanoge umbrella. We do have customised sessions various segments of investors like Doctors , Businessmen , Government employees , IT Professionals and so on. We have done programs for corporates who have 30 members as well as large companies with few thousands of employee base. There are tailored programs for different companies and for various levels of employees. If an IFA got a corporate client and if he/ she thinks that the corporate will be interested in these programs, can talk to us right away - we are keen to collaborate with .
WF: You mentioned programs for middle and senior management executives. Is there something you have on retirement planning?
K S Rao: Yes .. We do have customised sessions for goal based investments including retirement. Let me give you an example. We are currently working with the senior management of a south based PSU, where back of the envelope calculations show that in the next 3 years, around 3000 of their middle and senior management employees will be retiring, and the total retirement corpus they will collectively have to invest is likely to be around Rs.2000 crores! That's just one company! There is an ocean of opportunity available in the retirement planning space and the starting point is education around retirement planning. We are very sharply focused on this. Retiring professionals need sound, ethical advice on investing their retirement corpus judiciously. We have a huge responsibility to help them at this critical juncture and at the same time, we have a massive business opportunity available to us, if we do the right thing for the investors.
So yes, we can support our distributors with retirement planning education initiatives in any companies or groups they think will find this useful. Talk to us, talk to your Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund Relationship Manager!
Share this article
|
