Investors would need advisors when their income grows or make investment mistakes.
By building customer first aligned ecosystems and leveraging their 57 years of deep domain expertise Bajaj Capital is delivering business performance through design led disruptive solutions, significantly improving operational efficiency and enhancing user experiences to drive 1 Cr transactions for India. The Tiger of Wealth Management: as they now call themselves internally, is becoming a slogan that the industry has started witnessing.
Sanjiv Bajaj, Joint Chairman & MD, Bajaj Capital, shares the roadmap on digitization and how they could carry out 1 crore+ transactions with Outlook Money.
As the Gurugram evening turned a tad colder, The Outlook Money team visited the all-new lavish office of Bajaj Capital and was happily surprised to see the startup kind of hustle bustle at evening 6:30 PM. A younger team, dedicated to improving every touch point, reminded us of what it is to work with a team that wants to challenge the status quo. Led from the front by Sanjiv Bajaj, The Outlook Money team had over an hour-long conversation of everything that Bajaj Capital is doing and plans to revolutionize the Wealth ecosystem. Excerpts from our interview:
What is Bajaj Capital’s vision?
Bajaj Capital has always been deeply focused on customer relationships. We look for ways to delight our customers. We believe that finance is such an area where we could attain customer loyalty.
The world is transforming at breakneck speed and so is the investment ecosystem. Individuals’ financial requirements have changed as well. The complexity of financial products has expanded, and we are witnessing a movement in demand away from traditional investments and towards mutual funds and cryptocurrencies, among other things.
To make sure that our customers get value from their relationship with us, we are looking at offering different investment options that are right for them.
We also want to provide a single view of their investments from mutual funds, bonds and FD through our Investment Platform. Many people who start out as do-it-yourself investors will eventually need financial advisory as their income and assets increase with time. It is also seen that a lot of investors make financial mistakes because they are trying to do it on their own. They then come to us for correct guidance. Based on our perceptions, clients are looking for solutions that fit both their current and future requirements.
When faced with a situation like this, clients would look for a trustworthy brand, as well as an exceptionally dedicated advisor, both of whom would be assisted by artificial intelligence.
Bajaj Capital has already begun the process of providing consumers with a comprehensive understanding of the investing process, as well as the proper insurance coverage in terms of protection and risk management.
The tracking of customer transactions and overall financial wealth will become more integrated as Bajaj Capital continues to improve its holistic perspective of its clients’ financial wealth.
What are some of your plans to make Bajaj Capital a more investment-friendly option?
The demand for mutual funds as an asset class has gone up significantly. Campaigns like ‘Mutual Fund Sahi Hai’ have made mutual funds a popular investment option.
We see high demand from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, and the demand is going to rise in the days to come.
Our MF online platform is among the most stable investment portal, and mutual fund is the primary product category.
But selecting mutual funds with an excellent track record is di cult for many investors. We research different mutual funds. And once they pass our in-house metrics, clients can invest in these schemes directly online or through their Relationship Manager (RM).
In the future, we can expect Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help us research and recommend the right schemes to our investors. This is already on the anvil and soon you will see Bajaj Capital driving 1 Cr+ transactions.
Besides the investment, the pandemic had also made people realize the importance of health insurance. How have you fulfilled the health insurance needs of your clients?
COVID has made health insurance a necessary product. We have introduced a health insurance portfolio review, similar to an investment portfolio review, where we reviewed the existing health insurance of our clients based on their requirements. We did the review with the help of digital tools and experts.
We reviewed the health insurance plans of around 10,000 customers. It was shocking to know that many people had bought the wrong health insurance products. We then suggested the right health insurance plan for them that not only made them better protected but also made them see their investments and protection in an all-new light.
Bajaj Capital also offers National Pension System (NPS) and is the second-largest PoP. What is the story behind the growth?
Bajaj Capital is the second-largest Point of Presence (PoP) for the National Pension System, with a total subscriber base of 13,668. Many individuals desire a pension that will take care of their retirement, and NPS is one of the best ways to achieve that.
We got a big push when we onboarded a prominent financial services company as our corporate NPS client.
Our branch visibility, 360 degree visibility of our clients and forming deeper and meaningful relationships with our clients, has helped us greatly.
What are some steps that Bajaj Capital has taken to increase the customer delight factor?
Most customers want us to solve their queries or problems in a jiffy. And, as our company grows, it would be impossible to satisfy our clients through an only manual process. So, we have experimented with different technological innovations.
One such digital endeavor that is now in the works is an artificial intelligence-based chatbot. Clients can receive the most appropriate investment and insurance solutions and ideas through the use of a chatbot. In the future, we can expect the chatbot to be integrated with other services, such as WhatsApp and Alexa.
We have also included various new services for our clients, such as Robocalling, a mutual fund platform that can be accessible by both the Relationship Manager and the clients, UPI Payment, and a National Pension Scheme platform for both individuals and corporations.
We understand the importance of human expertise and the role it can play in clients’ satisfaction. The company has more than 300 centers in various country regions where our relationship managers reach out to new clients and nurture current client connections. These centers help us maintain and develop both our existing and new client relationships.
When people visit our branch with some query, we note it and make sure to come back to the person to address their problems. We do not randomly cold call people to sell them a product. Our calls are based on their requirement or their query.
We have opted for automated processing for daily tasks such as policy number queries.
Another important facility that adds a lot of value to our customers is our advanced portfolio analysis for our high-value clients. It is a detailed analysis of their portfolio. These reports are shared with the relationship manager, who explains the various nuances of the report to the client. We plan to launch this service through an app in the coming few months.
We haven’t forgotten our retail customers. For our retail customers, we have introduced a start-to-end investment journey. Now, any person can do the video KYC process and become KYC complaint through Bajaj Capital and get started with investment.
The relationship manager can see the investment actions of the client and vice versa. To make the system more secure, we have also added OTP as an additional verification step.