As the first step towards carrying the torch of financial literacy to the rest of the country, Moneylife Foundation held an interactive seminar in Pune on Saturday.
Pune, 14 August, 2010: Moneylife Foundation has taken significant strides forward since its launch in February this year. Within a period of just six months, the foundation has received an overwhelming response from the public, with more than 2,700 members already registered. However, much more needs to be done, especially in the light of the dismal health of the retail investor population in India.
Notwithstanding the government's claims to the contrary, India's investor population has fallen to 80 lakh from 2 crore over the past two years. According to CMIE, even mutual fund investment is restricted to just 20 lakh households. This only drives us in our efforts to spread further the message of financial literacy and awareness. We are looking to enrol 10,000 members by the end of this fiscal year in our bid to spread advocacy for the masses.
As the first step towards carrying this torch of financial literacy to the rest of the country, Moneylife Foundation on Saturday held an interactive seminar in Pune.Mr Debashis Basu, Editor of Moneylife and Ms Sucheta Dalal, Managing Editor of Moneylife held an interactive working session on finance titled 'How to be safe and smart with money'. Ms Dalal spoke on how to avoid losses by staying away from certain kinds of investments like chain marketing and pyramid schemes. She explained how these scamsters operate and advised investors to stay away from such frauds.
She also spoke about the implications of credit card transactions and the implications of default and its impact on an individual's credit history and ability to borrow. Mr Basu told people that investment does not have to be difficult and complicated if one was clear about the basic objectives, avoided obvious pitfalls and followed a sensible and consistent investment policy. "Many a times, investors are lured by fast and big returns and opt out for short-term investment. To avoid such risks, investors should think about the long term and fix goals accordingly," said Mr Basu. He showed how one could keep things simple, avoid complications and make steady returns without becoming an expert on markets.
This workshop was followed by another interesting seminar organised with the help of Karvy Mutual Fund Services and Computer Age Management Services (CAMS), India's top two registrar & transfer agents (RTAs). The two have got together to develop and offer some amazing online free tools that permit investors to access details of their mutual fund holdings and to track their entire portfolio.
Moneylife Foundation, along with Axis Mutual Fund, introduced these tools through presentations by senior executives of CAMS & Karvy.
As Prabal Nag, Vice President (business development) at CAMS, pointed out, the two RTAs have gone well beyond what is required of them in terms of facilitating and making the entire process of investing a more pleasant and easy experience. He urged investors to take advantage of the website services. These easy-to-use tools only require investors to register their email address with each mutual fund folio, which in turn, helps them access their account by creating a one-time password. Once in, an investor can get a consolidated view of his/her mutual fund investments, across different funds, fund houses or distributors, with information about returns, dividends, switches, etc; and generate transaction statements and update information across folios through a PAN-based service.
Apart from demonstrating the online tools, executives of CAMS and KARVY gave the audience some useful tips on how to ensure that the entire process is smooth and easy. They also mentioned the dos and don'ts to keep in mind while investing in mutual funds.
Anand Varadarajan, Head, Business Development of Karvy for Investor Relations Business spoke at length about the automation brought in by RTAs and its relevance for the investors.
Manesh Thakur (Vice President & Zonal Manager - West & East) Axis Mutual Fund, spoke about various issues facing the industry at large.
Investor feedback on the tools demonstrated was extremely positive; they said it freed them from the drudgery of tracking various account statements and calling mutual fund help-lines to inquire about statements from one of the 35-odd asset management companies. Now you can get all the information you want at the click of a button, 24x7. "You can actually get a combined account statement of all your investments across all funds served by the three R&TAs - Karvy, CAMS and Franklin Templeton," pointed out Mr Nag. Malati Majumdar, General Manager-Customer Relations at CAMS, made a detailed presentation of the various tools offered by the registrar through a live demonstration. — Moneylife Digital Team
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