|
Friends,
I am very happy to connect with you again through Saturday School, to share with you our new initiatives in BSL Nipun - our distributor empowerment platform, and Jaano Toh Maano - our investor education platform.
Samruddhi (Path to Prosperity): Unique Journey to Wealth Creation
Last week, we flagged off an innovative new investor education initiative, called Samruddhi, which as we know, means prosperity. Perhaps for the first time in our industry, investor education is being delivered in passenger trains! To begin with, two of the Shatabdi trains (Delhi-Chandigarh and Delhi-Amritsar) have been chosen as pilots. Shatabdi trains are reasonably short distance day journeys, which is an ideal format for us to engage with passengers. While they travel to their destination, Samruddhi will enable them to being their financial journey as well, and arrive safely at a destination that delivers Samruddhi - prosperity to them. The first Samruddhi-loaded Shatabdi train was flagged off last week by our CEO, Mr. Balasubramanian, along with Mr. Amit Pradhan , Regional Director , SEBI- Northern Regional Office and other officials of SEBI.
We have launched a magazine called Samruddhi, which is placed on all seats of the Shatabdi trains. Audio jingles are played in the trains, to build interest in Samruddhi. The magazine carries very diverse topics including financial education, financial well-being, investor voice, value of financial advisors, as well as non-financial aspects like healthy living, financial astrology and so on. Passengers are given a number to send an SMS to or to place a missed call to, from where a call back will be arranged to address any queries they have. On the first day of this pilot, around 2400 passengers travelled on these two routes, and we have received a very encouraging response from passengers.
This pilot will be extended in two ways - one is that it will be rolled out to all Shatabdi trains across the country, and two, we intend inviting IFAs from these locations to participate in this initiative. We have already talked to IFAs of the origin and destination locations, who are likely to travel on these trains. We propose to reserve a particular seat in each train for an IFA, and let all passengers know that they can consult a financial advisor on seat no xyz for any further clarifications they need to undertake their journey towards their own samruddhi successfully.
Another angle to Samruddhi which we intend launching is to have a fixed day of the week - say Thursdays - where we will set up a KYC desk at each of the destination. Process of on-boarding and formalities of KYC are being shared through the magazine. When passengers disembark at their destination, if they are convinced that they need to start a journey with mutual funds, the KYC desk will help them get on boarded.
Pehla Kadam - 360 degree financial literacy program in association with CNBC
Pehla Kadam, a joint initiative between BSL AMC and CNBC, which was launched on Aug 15th on Independence Day, by Mr. Jayant Sinha, Union Minister of State for Finance. It is a yearlong initiative that covers on ground as well as on air financial education. We have committed to 60 out-reach initiatives across the country, engaging with diverse investor groups. These include school and college students, young investors, army personnel, homemakers, SME entrepreneurs and so on. These are typically 2 hour programs where we engage with these different groups on aspects of personal finance that is relevant to them. We also have an extensive rural financial literacy program in place as part of Pehla Kadam - these are day long initiatives in rural areas, where we teach village folk basics of personal finance.
Every weekend, on Saturdays and Sundays, CNBC airs a two hour Pehla Kadam program between 12 and 2 pm, where we cover a classroom session, we showcase one of the outreach programs and we also handle in-depth Q&A on different aspects including saving and banking, mutual funds, taxation etc.
BSL Nipun
As part of our ongoing efforts to create contemporary training modules for our distribution partners, we have launched two new modules. The first one focuses on understanding credit opportunities and credit oriented products. The second one is a communications module which focuses on selling through story telling.
I am also very happy to share with our distribution friends that we have successfully completed 100 CFGP (Chartered Financial Goal Planner) programs and have certified over 3600 IFAs as CFGPs. In a recent distributor interaction, our CEO, Mr. Balasubramanian remarked that this is only the beginning, and that his mission is to get to a stage where we have 100,000 IFAs who are CFGP certified across the country! That's a mission and a challenge that our team has taken up. The road is long and not always smooth, but I am convinced that with focus and unstinted efforts, we will reach the aspirational goal that Mr.Bala has articulated!
Share this article
|
BSL Nipun