Ms. Manjiri Deodhar, Mumbai
An ambitious lady – Ms. Manjiri – who holds the degree of cost accountancy has served many multinational companies in her professional career before she became full time Financial Advisor. She was determined about not to join with her husband's chartered accountancy service as she wanting to do something on her own and hence she took LIC agency. In LIC agency she secured many achievements in very short time period and was doing well. However she experienced that for proper financial planning and advice other asset class and products must be a part of advice and that understanding made her to take a route towards providing comprehensive financial solutions. Defining moment came into her life to start with MF Advisory business when her family friend suggested her to go for MF agency and advised her to join NJ India as a partner.
Team e-Saathi presents and interview of a Lady who felt the need of proper financial advise is required to everyone when she experienced herself with the facts when she was presented with financial planning reports by a CFP for her own financial planning. We wish all luck to Ms. Manjiri and her team to take a lead in this growing industry.
ES:Please introduce yourself and also share your vision and mission or goals in life.
Manjiri: I had completed my graduation in the year 1989 and cost Accountancy Course (ICWA) in the year 1992. Initially I had worked for around 10 years in various multinational companies on managerial positions. Since beginning my vision was very clear – financial independence, and achievements of various goals in life, and start towards contribution towards society with devoting time as well money in the area of education.
ES:What inspired you to choose the career of a financial advisor / distributor?
Manjiri: Initially after taking VRS from employment I was very clear in my mind that I will not join my husband who is a practicing Chartered Accountant. Though we both are professionals in Finance Field, I started with, as a Life Insurance Advisors for LIC of India in 2010. I had achieved lot of international titles such as MDRT (2) COT (1) TOT (3). But we felt that advising clients only for the life insurance is not sufficient. The financial planning needs to be done considering various asset class like equities, Mutual Funds and Insurance. Our good family friend CA Bhushan Limaye, Dadar, Mumbai inspired me to take up a Mutual Fund Agency and that too with N.J. Invest. He had extended his help since beginning in setting up the agency gave tips, guidance in initial times.
ES:Setting the financial advisory business takes some time. How did you handle the challenges on the financial front in the initial period of the business?
Manjiri: Since Kiran Deodhar (My husband) is a practicing C.A. and has good office setup in Vile Parle, Mumbai. I was able to induct additional staff for my Mutual Fund Agency. He diverted his senior assistant Ms. Sunila S. Samant, sincere, young and dynamic lady to this Mutual Fund advisory Profession. With her, I have established a partnership firm Wealth Raised to N, we both completed AAMFI exam and even Sunila is further pursuing the course of CFP.
ES:What made you to join NJ as NJ Partner?
Manjiri: CA Bhushan Limaye explained me the support and help which NJ extends to their partners. Their training is very informative and various meets which are arranged with Funds Managers adds the value to the partner. This encouraged us to join as N.J. partner.
ES:Do you promote the idea of savings through MF SIP in your clients?
Manjiri: We have got different set of clients, clients of different age group. Initially we got a huge response from clients above age 55 or retired clients, but simultaneously we convinced young clients as well specifying them the advantage of SIP. Starting SIP’s and attaching them to the goals is getting us good investment in SIP’s.
ES:Client communications is an integral part of your business. Please share any best practices / services related to communications adopted by you.
Manjiri: Clients communication is an integral part of business which includes sending of various videos, quotes on WApp. We are organizing a client education meeting once a month wherein we call for various local speakers, such as financial analysts, Equity Analysts and CA for 2 hour lecture in our office. Further we run a WApp group of around 70 clients, whom we give various inputs on stock markets and Mutual fund.
ES:How much importance do you give to Insurance in you advisory practice?
Manjiri: We always believe in Fixed Interest bearing instruments like PPF, Insurance, Endowments, FDR etc, because we believe that all goals which we intend to achieve is to be divided in two levels – “Non Negotiable” level and “Nice to have” level. Major part of such not negotiable level of goals are to be achieved by Fixed Interest bearing instruments and “Nice to have” ones to be achieved by variable instruments like Mutual Funds Equities. Besides this we always calculate HLV Human Life Value and suggest Term Insurance. We stress on the minds of clients that Insurance is not of his life but it is an insurance of his future income earning capacity. We don’t call Life Insurance as Life Insurance, but call it as Income Insurance.
ES:How do you educate and convince your clients for mutual funds, especially the first time investors?
Manjiri: The first timers are very difficult to convince but the falling interest rates / last year’s Income Tax paid by them on FDR Interest, helps us to push some investment to MF for retired first timers. We suggest them balance fund and that too dividend option, as receiving dividend in their bank a/c gives them lot of comfort about their investment in Mutual Funds.
ES:Your experience with NJ's technology initiatives in terms of various Desks for Clients & Partners?
Manjiri: We are always open in adopting new and facilities and technologies. NJ technology is a tool which both clients and partner have to take benefit of it as much as they can take.
Since we are new in this business, NJ Technology is helping us lot in providing accurate data on a single click. This is helping us to save time, man hours and back office work for data management and in preparing various reports. Client’s servicing plays major role in building good relations with client and ultimately helping us to increase the business.
ES:How you evaluate NJ's technology initiatives such as various On-line Desks & Mobile Solutions?
Manjiri: NJ E-Wealth Account: Very useful tool, NJ E-Wealth Account provides facility of error free transaction at anytime from anywhere. It is one click solution to deal with all types of investment products. This is one of the best platforms available in the market which is user friendly and eco friendly.
ES:Please share with us any standards / best practices related to client segmentation. If yes, also share any differentiation made in service offerings to these client segments.
Manjiri: We are in the beginning of our profession as MF advisors, hence we have our prospects divided into various segments based on certain criteria such as Income level, age, risk appetite, so that we can design their financial planning according to such criteria’s. At present we do not differentiate among our clients but certainly, we have designed certain models like a separate relationship manager to our HNI Client which we will put to practice in future as we grow.
ES:What type of a boss / leader do you see yourself as? What is the image of the ideal boss that you aspire to become?
Manjiri: I see myself as an “accommodative leader”. I feel our office staff is part of our family. We spend more time in the office than at home. Hence we always live as family. My financials are always open to all my staff. Even in case of Investment in M.F., I invested a huge amount first and then tried to convince our clients on that basis. I always aspire to become an ideal boss, as a head of the family who protects, supports and at times shouts on family members. I believe in assigning responsibilities, on the second line and allow them to perform in their own way in the achievements of targets. I am always ready to extent my support whenever they ask such.
ES:Can you share any incident /event which has had a lasting impact on you or your business as a financial advisor /distributor?
Manjiri: Since my husband is a CA we were doing our financial planning in some better way, that was our feeling till we hired a CFP to carry out our financial planning, we received some 400 pages report and while discussing with him on each and every aspect of planning / goals we realized that how much short was our sight, many factors we did not considered while planning. This I feel this incidence in my life which initiated me to become a financial advisor.
ES:How do you assess /see the future of financial advisory business in India? How can we as Partners be ready / prepared to make the most of it?
Manjiri: Financial advisory business now has become a essence in the Industry. New generation in India is giving priority in scientific financial planning and they are disciplined too, to implement such planning and converting it into reality. We as financial advisors should continuously need a training and updating our knowledge about various factors in the economy. Indian economy is global now and due to present government decisions / implementation we can certainly achieve a huge upsurge. Also with lot of complexity in the Investment instruments customers need to be educated well before taking his investment decisions. I feel this industry will be expanded to such a level in future that it will overpass the general Taxation practice by Chartered Accountants. This could be as rewarding as any other financial profession in India in near future.
ES:Self evaluation and assessment is something we all should do regularly. How do you assess your own self and/or your business? Are there any specific parameters you refer to?
Manjiri: As any other business we have also prepared our 5 years sales plan which was then broken up into yearly plans. Such plans we have broken up into monthly and weekly plans. We do evaluate our own performance v/s targets every week, find out variances and decide the means to cover such short comings. We have a reporting system of Lumpsum AUM ticket size and SIP ticket size. We know every week what such tickets sizes are, as on that day and we concentrate our efforts to increase such ticket size to the target ticket size.
ES:How much importance do you give to Asset Allocation & Risk Profile while offering solution to clients need?
Manjiri:We always give importance to asset allocation. After obtaining the existing investment data of clients and monetizing the goals, we do not prefer to suggest to the client that he should close his PPF A/c or surrender LIC Policy. We feel that such fixed return instruments though give less returns is as import as relatively risky assets such as equities / MF. Asset allocation / asset re-balancing and continues monitoring is after all essence of a successful financial planning. Risk appetite or risk profile of a client is also important we do arrive a risk profile of client by a questionnaire method.
ES:Winning the trust of a Client is not an easy task. How do you think you can win the trust of the Clients?
Manjiri: In our discussions with the clients we never convince him to put the entire investible surplus in MF we never tell him to close PPF / not to subscribe to PPF / surrender LIC policies because we feel this is as necessary as MF or equity. We believe in financial pyramid. The base of the pyramid should be completed with the fixed return instrument and once the strong base is completed then in second level the equities and MF investment is to be made. This gives confidence to the clients. Secondly we feel once we have adopted a financial advisory role we should work in best interest of client and not to earn money. We make sure that our feeling reaches to the clients in our meetings we think this way we can certainly win trust of our clients. This approach we can adopt as we know how much we want to earn only after 5 years. Within 5 years our motive is to expand the client base as much as possible and earning is secondary.
ES:What suggestion / advice you would like to give to new Partners who have yet not established themselves in the business?
Manjiri: This profession – financial advisor profession is to be considered like any other profession / business. It requires capital, there are fixed capital expenditure even if office is on rental. Three years operational expenses such as salary, electricity, telephone, rent and other, are to be considered as capital expenditure (capex) and not operational expenditure (opex). The partner intended to enter in this profession should have his 5 years business plan ready with clear bi-furcation of capex and opex and the need of capital. He should calculate the break the even point and payback period and always concentrate his efforts to bring the BEP from 36 months to 33 months to 30 months. Needless to say expenses on self / staff training / doing some course is also capex and not opex. All operational expenses for fist 3 years should be considered as investment and not expenses. If one calculates return on investment it will work out tremendous after 3 years. Theory of compounding and patience are the essential factors to be successful in this Financial Advisory business.
ES:Can you please share your short term and long term targets for your business.
Manjiri: Short Term targets are daily targets. Shortfall is drawn by us daily and reported on our WApp group every evening, weekly targets v/s achievement on every Monday. We know our long term targets i.e. 5 year targets. We concentrate our efforts to achieve this five year target in less & lesser number of months.
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