Sanjiv Bajaj, chairman and managing director of Bajaj Finserv, on Tuesday acknowledged the problem of pesky calls and promotional messages and said a solution would soon be offered. The company, he said, recognises the “right of customers to be forgotten”, adding that in three months the firm will provide an option to enable customers to opt out of promotional calls. “Customers who opt for it, won’t be disturbed with any more call or message,” Bajaj said.
He observed many of these calls are also a case of institutional frauds, whereby the person claims to be representing the company. “We process millions of transactions a month, and some are bound to go wrong. We would like to bring the number of complaints down to zero from a few thousands at present, but we cannot control all fraudulent calls,” Bajaj said.
Bajaj was speaking at the launch of Bajaj Finserv’s asset management company (AMC). The AMC, he said, would help diversify the group’s retail franchise and leverage Bajaj Finserv companies’ combined strength in financial services. Bajaj Finserv has a customer base of 100 million across 4,500 locations.
India’s MF industry at present has over 40 players with assets under management of above Rs 40 trillion as of April 2023. SBI MF tops the table with an AUM of over Rs 7.45 trillion, followed by ICICI Pruential (Rs 5.42 trillion) and HDFC MF (Rs 4.74 trillion).
The fund house will focus on being investment-led, rather than sales-led, by focusing on offerings that create value for investors, rather than adopting an aggressive and high-risk strategy to chase higher returns.
Ganesh Mohan, CEO of Bajaj Finserv AMC, said: “The product portfolio would be designed based on market opportunities and the possibilities of generating sustainable alpha, as opposed to large market size categories.
The AMC will launch products across fixed income, hybrid and equity categories for retail, HNIs and institutional investors. The company said it will begin by launching liquid, overnight, and money market products to cater to the institutional segment and company treasuries.
In March, Bajaj Finserv received the licence from Sebi to start an MF business. It has filed its first seven schemes ― liquid fund, money market fund, overnight fund, arbitrage fund, large and midcap fund, balanced advantage fund and flexi cap fund ― with the regulator. It will start rolling out these products within the next 30 days, starting with fixed income products.