‘There’s room for more financial planners in India’
Gandhi is going by the response that Ameriprise, a financial planning company, has received in the last one year since it started operations in India.
“People want advisers but are not finding them,” said Gandhi. “The company is focused on the mass affluent segment with income between R20 lakh and R80 lakh and has found that this segment is underserved as there are no players with scale,” Gandhi added.
According to Gandhi, Ameriprise met its internal targets for the entire first year within the first 100 days of starting operations in India.
The company has not disclosed the actual numbers but Gandhi said their decision to start business in India has proved right as Indians are looking for unbiased third party advice for their investment planning. A majority of the plans in India are skewed towards comprehensive planning rather than single goals or product buying.
According to Gandhi, what has worked well for Ameriprise in India was the huge number of referrals they are getting from existing customers.
“Normally, when we get one new customer referral from an existing customer in one year it is considered a good performance and that is what happens elsewhere in the world but in India each customer was generating multiple referrals,” said Gandhi.
Thanks to word of mouth publicity,
