The last few years have seen the asset-management industry touch new highs across the board. Both in terms of assets under management and new investors, the industry growth has been transformative. The industry added Rs 4.7 lakh crore of assets in just one year, with 1.6 crore new investors folios coming in.
The systematic investment plan (SIP) has been one of the pillars of the industry. The industry witnessed 64 per cent jump to cross Rs 7,000 crore of monthly inflow through SIP. In addition to AUM growth, the industry is also maturing in terms of its visibility and adoption among a wider audience. RNAM became the first Indian AMC to go for an initial public offering (IPO) and listing.
Despite growing distributor count, there is need for a much more wide-spread distributor and advisor community.
USP of investment strategy
Our core focus in our equity funds is on providing long-term wealth-creation solution for our investors. An important enabler to achieve this goal is the guiding investment philosophy of 'growth at reasonable valuations'.
On fixed income, especially on the credit-research side, we emphasise in-house original research a lot, adopting a 'credit-first, yield-later' approach. We make investments only in those issues where we have done a thorough assessment and where we are comfortable with the capital structure, financial flexibility of the issuers, critical operational metrics, etc.
Impact of SEBI's reclassification
The best part of the exercise was the standardisation it has brought to schemes. It has enabled us to complete our product bouquet and ensure proper evaluation of our funds in the respective categories.
Becoming more investor-friendly
Our focus is on simplifying the product and process and providing value to our investors. For example, our mutual fund offerings based on solution-oriented approach - child education, retirement planning, etc. - makes the investment process more approachable and easier to understand.
We have been building one of the most integrated digital infrastructure that provides a frictionless transaction experience on our digital assets such as website and mobile app.
On the process side, we have adopted new initiatives such as digital kiosk, complete online KYC process through biometrics and instant-redemption facility. These initiatives help in seamless migration of physical transactions to digital medium.
This article was originally published on December 26, 2018.
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