New Delhi: As part of its efforts to double the investor base, the Association of Mutual Funds of India (Amfi) is working with India Post to train nearly one lakh postmen as distributors, in addition to focusing on four states to ensure that every district has at least 10 distributors by end of the year.Amfi chief executive Venkat Nageswar Chalasani said the industry body has adopted four states, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Meghalaya, where it is trying to train college students and is targeting 20,000 new distributors in these states in the first year. “By end of the year, we expect at least 10 distributors in each district of these states and at least 20 by next year,” said Chalasani. Besides, tie-ups with leading academic institutions are in the offing to “train the trainers”.AMFI has already partnered the department of posts to address legacy issues related to KYC of individuals, who did not have Aadhaar numbers seeded. The plan is now to extend it to training postmen as India Post revamps its operations, focusing on turning each of its verticals into a profit centre. If the move goes through, postmen will be like relationship managers in banks, who hawk savings products.For mutual funds nearly 45% of the investments are now coming from the bottom 30 towns, although overall 65% of the share is from the top 30 cities.Annually around 30,000 new distributors join the mutual fund industry but net additions hover around the 10,000-mark. While changing savings habits and online platforms have seen a surge in new investors into mutual funds, especially through systematic investor plans (SIPs), new distributors are seen to be critical in expanding the footprint to smaller towns and rural areas.There is a boom in mutual fund investments in the last few years resulting in the number of folios jumping from 2.1 crore in 2019 to 5.6 crore now. Chalasani said the target is to double it in the next few years. “Our campaign has created tremendous awareness and we will see a massive growth as there is a huge potential,” he said, pointing to 80 crore bank accounts in the country.Currently, the assets under management in India are to the tune of 21% of GDP, compared to more than 100% in developed countries and 65% being the global average.
