A friend asked me to see value research online – and see the lead story on why you should distrust your adviser. I was amused because ‘How to select a financial adviser’ is a topic with which I have often grappled for and on behalf of many friends. Let us take a typical ‘media’ answer […]

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Is the financial service industry doing anything for society? I mean is there a VALUE ADD or is it just getting more and more out of the value adding channel? Not sure? Ask MBA colleges – the financial service industry is a big saviour. Whether it be ICICI, Hdfc, Kotak, Indiainfoline, – all their arms […]

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For somebody who has spent a long time watching the mutual fund industry I am not sure whether it is going to be a case of “I knew this will happen” or even worse ‘I told you so’…. How does a fund scheme get launched – rather why? Simply because the sales force has never […]

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Training as a CA has many advantages (and a few disadvantages perhaps). One of the advantages is you get skeptical about numbers, and you get to question conclusions/views drawn from numbers. I remember one life insurance company giving me their settled claims to received claims ratio. Smartly it included maturity claims, investment products, pension plans….suddenly […]

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In what was being seen as a turf battle between sebi and irda, the winner as of now seems to be Irda. It shows the power of the people in the life Insurance business. Now if you have LIC, SBI, Hdfc, Icici, …each with a few ‘000 crores of stake in the insurance business and […]

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If you have been in the equity markets for 30 years you have some advantages. First you have seen many players come and go. You keep wondering how many are genuine, how many are fake. Over this period you classify people into platinum, gold, silver, …and of course mud. Fund managers also come in various […]

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For a minute forget what the various parts of the financial services industry is telling you. The profitability of this industry seems to be fantastic. Let us take 4 parts of the industry: a. Banking: Over the years the biggest and the richest fortunes have been made by bankers. No doubt about it. Goldman Sachs, […]

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