Savers are not interested in investing in mutual funds. But instead of trying to find out the real reasons, the fund companies seem to think that if they use marketing gimmicks like consumer products companies, they will be able to expand their reach, rather than simpler products and actual performance

The mutual fund industry, which is facing continuous erosion in equity assets for several years now, is clearly worried about its survival. Some desperate measures were discussed at an industry summit in June to meet the objective of ‘reaching out to a larger number of investors’ and focus on ‘investor education & awareness’. The industry believes that its problem lies in the fact that 74% of its market is concentrated in just five cities, so it engaged PriceWaterHouse (PWC) to come up with solutions.

Typical of consulting firms, PWC held out the promise of ‘big opportunity for growth and further penetration’ and offered some neat, if fanciful, solutions that are attractive to companies with spending power but no ideas. PWC’s suggestions were:  to market mutual funds as a ‘concept’; use ‘social media’ to spread the word; and use ‘mobile banking’ which could be a potential game-changer in marketing mutual funds. Let’s examine each of these.

Fair & Lovely Mutual Funds: Since a speaker from Hindustan Unilever was invited to tell the industry how to sell mutual funds like personal-care products, let us look at the hottest-selling ‘concept’ created by such companies. Giant multinationals spend crores of rupees every year to tell Indians that being of fairer skin should be our ultimate goal and desire. If you are fair, you are immediately more beautiful, more confident, have more friends, get the best jobs and attract better partners, is their message. In recent years, they have expanded this ‘concept’ to men and doubled their market. Prominent media houses ‘help’ to promote the ‘concept’ of metrosexual males who are unembarrassed about using an array of cosmetics. Such editorial promotions are now part of advertising deals.

More importantly, these companies have no qualms about making claims that are outright false or misleading. They routinely launch products with blatantly false and bogus claims about making your skin X-times fairer, your hair Y-times stronger or use tags like ‘guaranteed’, ‘best’, ‘100%’ and ‘herbal’. They also file complaints against each other’s products which are regularly upheld by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). The offending ad is withdrawn for a few months until another outrageous ad takes its place. Since ASCI is not a statutory regulator, it remains soft in dealing with ‘habitual offenders’. After all, media and advertisers are beneficiaries of big advertising budgets. What about consumers? Why don’t they protest? Well, because these nicely perfumed gels and lotions may not make you fairer, but they are harmless; they moisturise and they allow people to live in hope. In other words, the consumer is a willing sucker in this case and there is little harm done.

Can mutual funds (MFs) try to sell their schemes like fair & lovely? MFs have an obligation to perform. If an MF scheme, over a period of time, gives you low or negative returns, it hurts your financial future. It is not harmless.

Sell MFs through Mobile Phones? Before you say: ‘What an idea sirji’, pause and think. True, India has a mobile subscriber base of 900 million, but using phones to invest, exit and redeem funds? What do you do about a regulator whose complex KYC (know your customer) procedures make it a hassle even to buy online? Moneylife has been researching the online subscription process offered by leading distribution companies and has come to the conclusion that it is so cumbersome that only net-savvy and dogged individuals would use this option, especially for first-time subscription. If the entry to mutual fund investment is difficult, how can mobile phone transactions make it easier? And who will MFs target for mobile transactions? If it is the affluent class in smaller cities and towns, then access to information is hardly a barrier. Surely PWC does not expect the non-urban poor, who have low income and savings, to use mobile banking to buy mutual funds?

Social Media for Mutual Funds: PWC suggests that mutual funds should use social media for product innovation, customer services and real-time information with the aim to create unique solutions and experiences. Creating twitter handles or facebook pages only works when handled well and for companies that deliver on their promises. It can be brutal and enormously damaging when a company has poor service, grievance redress mechanism or couldn’t care less for customers, which is often the case.

Consider just one example. HDFC Mutual Fund is consistently among the best performers in the industry and HDFC Bank is certainly the best in terms of its stock price and profitability. But check the Bank’s @HDFC_Cares twitter handle and you find that it is a magnet for angry customers to vent their ire. In fact, it would probably do well to avoid a possible negative rub-off. Social media is completely democratic and there are plenty of global case studies to show that the impact of hundreds of instant opinions (including false and uninformed ones) can devastate a brand.  

The best advice that PWC can give MFs is to focus on performance and pay attention to consumer needs instead of launching products only to enhance assets under management. The investment will come.