Not very long ago good quality advice was available only to millionaires and mostly men over 50 years of age! Now it is available to all of us. It required a team to understand what advisors said and you had to interpret it yourself. No. It was not easy even for the millionaires. Now advice is available to everybody. Democracy means all investors can access data, analysis, etc. Hopefully with so much of data, analysis becomes simple, no? Hell, no. It has got a lot complicated.

Automated asset management services, robo-advisors, and some break away fund managers have unleashed a storm of creativity and progress. Many IFA are adopting some of these technologies to incorporate into their practices. They are now trying to and actually serving the new customers in various places – these would not have been able to reach. Thank you technology.

I do see younger people using ‘technology’ like scrip-box. However,  the main worry for an investor in such start ups is what does it take a well informed investor can just migrate to the ‘direct’ platform. That hurts the service provider. I have no clue about what happened in FundsIndia, but I can understand the frustration of a person creating the platform – and the investor in such a platform. So what is the solution? Will people go to these platforms and do their own investing and pay a fee which is a %age of the assets under management? For a few years maybe, but after that they will want a far superior service or a much lower price. Charging on base of assets makes sense only for the physical interaction, advice, etc. For an online platform, the advice delivery seems to be really difficult. I just got a friend to go to a CA – and he saved a few million rupees – because he was making a mistake in LTCG calculation. Similarly I find people who have invested in wrong funds – and hey I have stopped advising long ago!! I just refer them elsewhere. I get one email every day asking for investment hand holding – I just forward it to a few of the advisers I know.

Surely there is a demand for advice, and there are a lot of people offering it in some form or the other….will they meet? and how will they meet?

I seriously do not know the answer. Do remember that there are only 3000 advisers who are paying GST – shows that this is a dying community.

  1. One values only before he does not have it ,or ,after he has lost it.
    If advisory community is dying community as referred in last para ,it will be valued only after it is lost!!
    Rightly said, Indians prefer to b Penny Wise & Pound ????

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