Service Enhancement for a Mutual Funds Distribution company.
Introduction
The mutual funds distribution industry plays a crucial role in connecting investment products to individual and institutional investors. It involves various intermediaries, such as banks, independent financial advisors (IFAs), online platforms, and brokerage firms, who help investors select and invest in mutual funds based on their financial goals and risk tolerance.
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Key Components of the Industry
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Asset Management Companies (AMCs) – Fund houses that create and manage mutual funds.
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Distributors & Advisors – Entities that sell mutual fund schemes to investors (banks, wealth managers, IFAs, digital platforms).
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Regulators – Institutions like SEBI (in India), SEC (in the U.S.), and others that ensure compliance and investor protection.
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Investors – Retail, high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), and institutional investors seeking wealth growth through mutual funds.
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A quick context on the company's role and challenges.
Sancheet Investment is a Financial Advisory services of Mutual Funds registered with AMFI, which had been providing similar services for a few decades to the satisfaction of its clients. Sancheet Investment offers a wide array of products and services, including integrated Financial planning, Wealth management, Tax Consulting services , Insurance & Mutual Fund. Sancheet Investment serves over 1200 clients, high net worth families and individuals and retail investors.
Key Painpoints/ Challenges
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Based on the interaction with the client, there were some expectations towards resolutions the client was seeking They were as follows.
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1. The client wanted to scale up the organisation but found it difficult to know where to begin with.
2. It was difficult for the organisation to get the newer generation omboarded as customers.
3. They wanted to rebrand and reposition themselves in the market to be able to compete with their competitors.
4. The client was handling the business single handedly since customers looked at her as the brand and associated trust with her. This made is hard to scale making her a bottle neck.
Research and Discovery
The discovery effort around this service involved the following
User interviews
The client was interviewed to understand the offerings they've had. Their vision, mission and expectations from the company. The interview involved investigating more about their role and involvement in the sales of the products to the customers .
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Existing customers were interviewed to understand their experiences with the organisation.
The interview was focussed on understanding presales and post sales services.
The intent was to understand the motivation and the likelihood of the customers staying loyal to the brand.
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New prospective customers were interviewed to understand their idea and preferences of investments. Their current financial plans and future expectations.
They were interviewed to understand their awareness about our client, awareness about the subject matter and their apprehensions towards investments
It was important to understand the latest trends and the digital dexterity of the customers and prosects. It helped see if the organisation was aligned to their needs.
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I conducted competitor studies to understand the latests trends and capabilities of financial advisory companies to be able to plot our client alongside and see their growth relatively. ​
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Key findings
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The company, although expected rebranding, it wasnt just rebranding that they needed. They needed to upskill and scale up to be able to provide as per current user needs.
The client was a single person trying to provide all services single handedly and created a bottle neck
They were involved in a lot of manual work and forms which consumed around 15 man hours to assess and respond to a customer.
The client had inadequate workforce to be able to delegate work costing one person 4 days to evaluate 1 customer, where competitors could do a minimum of 4 customers in 4 days.
They had outdated application that was provided to the customers post onboarding which did not allow users to find what they are looking for. Hence the customer would end up calling the client costing them a minimum of 7 mins per call. on an average.
The customer was handed with a lot of documents to educate them with new emerging funds overwhelming them and leaving them confused.
There were no follow up processes that allowed the client to speak to the customer on regular basis about their fund performances, values and opportunities. There was essentially no customer active service.
Service Design approach.
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Observing the client providing service to the customer in real time, monitoring all processes and documents and speaking to the customers, i was able to create uer journey maps. these helped to chalk an as is service blueprint that showed the different process, time taken to complete each and the gaps in the processes.
Typical user journey of a distributor
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based on the conversation and investigation of the current service, an as is service blueprint was created. the below is a representation of the actual blueprint. The original one with micro trade details cannot be shared due to NDA clauses.
Key Challenges (Highlighted for Optimization)
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Awareness – Investors struggle with financial literacy → Needs personalized education tools.
Onboarding – Manual KYC processing is slow → Automation can reduce delays.
Fund Selection – Too many options overwhelm investors → AI-based recommendations needed.
Portfolio Management – Lack of real-time insights → Needs better data visualization.
Redemption – NAV settlement & tax deductions slow down payouts → Instant withdrawals needed.
Customer Support – Response times are slow → AI-driven support can improve efficiency
