After lying low for almost two years, mutual funds are back to hiring. The bulk of recruitment is taking place in the sales and distribution front, in an effort to improve footprint and reach out to more customers. Ever since the market regulator had banned entry loads for mutual funds (August 1, 2009), the industry has been facing redemptions and since then fund houses had frozen recruitment to cope up with the tough times.
But with sales of SIPs(systematic investment plans) tasting initial success in non-metros over the last six months, a major push is being given by fund house towards marketing and distribution of equity products in these areas.
Says Ashish Kakkar, head HR at ICICI Prudential AMC, ?We have been slowly increasing our presence in the tier-II and tier-III cities and need people to scale up the business.? ICICI Prudential, is currently present in 200 locations across the country as compared with about 80 in 2007.
Currently, MF assets beyond the top ten cities constituted about 26% as of March 2010. Adds RS Srinivas Jain, CMO, SBI Mutual Fund, ?We have been recruiting and are likely to continue to do so. Last year we hardly added any people.?
SBI MF has picked up 50 people in the last few months primarily in the marketing and sales departments and plan to open other 20 branches in the current financial year taking its overall tally to 100 branches around the country.
Observes Sundeep Sikka, CEO, Reliance MF, ?We are scaling up our business and have hired people for sales distribution. Currently we have a work force of over 1,400 people compared with 1,100 last year and plan to continue with our recruitment.? To some extent, recruitment are being done to fill up vacancies as in cases of Sundaram MF, Axis MF and UTI MF are filling vacancies.
Interestingly, mutual funds have roped in sales teams of life insurance companies, which have been reducing sales forces following the new guideline by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) for ULIPs. Equity SIPs are also fast catching up in non-metros. According to CAMS data, in the month of August, 3.2 lakh of new SIP accounts were opened by its MF clients, as compared to 1.7 lakh in April 2010. Bulk of the incremental gain has come from non-metros, where the equity culture is seemingly catching on. Apparently, in such places, some of the dormant independent financial advisors are back to selling mutual funds.
