Wealth management is synonymous with high networth individuals and when KGFS decides to call its army of frontline staff ‘wealth managers’, the tag does bring with it power and associated responsibility.
Keeping this in mind, the ITHC training team conducted a 2-day refresher training program for the 1st and 2nd batch of wealth managers (WMs) of Pudhuaaru KGFS with the dual objectives of strengthening in them the concept of wealth management of the rural household; and to bring about behavioral changes that such a role demands.
The training program brushed up concepts in rural finance; investing – safety, liquidity and returns; tools such as debt, equity and mutual funds; insurance, concepts of moral hazard and adverse selection; and the diversification of risk.
This was followed by exercises in financial planning where WMs were given customer cases in order to work out cash flows and to arrive at optimal products for the household. This also set them thinking in many a different way – from whether weekly repayment would be a good option for a customer earning revenues once in every cropping season, to the convincing fact that regular disciplined savings even if it were tiny, would without doubt multiply to a sizable corpus, thanks to compounding.
The behavioral training involved etiquette sessions and select games facilitated by Poorna and Bharathi, which ranged from the simple Chinese whispers to more complex game-theory based games.
Such games underscored the importance of planning, teamwork and effective communication. Parallels were also drawn to the reality that finance is not a zero-sum game and that all players can benefit by getting involved.
Throughout, WMs shared interesting insights and personal experiences from the field. Mr. Chandrachudan, Head of training, noted the transformation the WMs had undergone, into confident, efficient proponents of the KGFS ideology, to whom customers readily divulge their financial information.
Ms. Bindu Ananth, President, IFMR Trust, had an interactive session with the WMs where she gave her inputs on how WMs’ interaction with the clients has to be exhaustive in order to understand and prescribe suitable products to them. She stressed on the KGFS mission and the importance of Wealth Management towards achieving it.
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Deepti George and Poorna Pushkala Chandrasekaran contributed to this post.
