Investor awareness webinar organized by GNDU

Amritsar, June 26 (Punjab Post Bureau) – An investor awareness webinar was organized jointly by University School of Financial Studies of the Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar and Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) on ‘Wealth Creation through Financial Management’ under the patronage of Vice Chancellor, Prof. Jaspal Singh Sandhu. The webinar was inaugurated by Prof. Hardeep Singh Dean Academic Affairs of the University. As many as 800 participants learned through various sessions during this webinar.

            Shri Surya Kant Sharma, Senior Consultant AMFI, who was keynote speaker in the webinar at the outset touched upon the importance of financial security of individuals. He emphasized that an investor should first think and ensures adequate life insurance, reasonable medical insurance cover and an emergency fund before embarking upon the journey of wealth creation through sustained investments which is most essential for prosperity. He then made a vehement plea for regular savings and increases of savings every year minimum by 10%. Mr. Sharma emphasised that investors should not be money accumulator but wealth creator which only would make them comfortable with regard to their money needs for their milestones in life. 

            He then advised participants that they should look at real return and not on notional return as inflation and tax liability substantially takes away major portion of notional return. He cautioned participants that most of the investments except in governmental shames have risk but risk can be managed by simple formula –Think, understand and invest. He also emphasized the need to have financial planning of their families in place for focused investment and also the need for practicing rule of compounding in investments for higher return in long run. 

          Mr. Sharma further shared basic information on various investment avenues available in the market viz. Government/RBI bonds, corporate bonds, Government schemes (Post office schemes, PPF, NPS, Sukanya Samriddhi Scheme, securities market etc.  real estate, gold and securities market. Shri Sharma cautioned general investor not to enter into securities market directly as there are inherent risks in the market ,Instead, mutual funds are the best option available for general investor wherein he/she can invest a minimum amount of Rs.500/- though Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) and built a good corpus over a period of time. There is a wide spectrum of mutual funds schemes ranging from equity funds to debt funds to exchange traded funds which can be chosen by an investor as per his risk apatite and investment horizon.

            At the end, he emphatically cautioned participants not to invest their hard earned money on the advice of others including agents and never in unregulated fund mobilisation schemes – Ponzi scheme, chit funds and committees etc. – which give assurance for higher and quick return at the beginning but ultimately vanish with the hard earned money of investors. Not so affluent class of investors are more susceptible to such allurement and we all have a social responsibility to make them aware about the menace of such schemes and impress upon them not to invest their money in such schemes. He also informed that as per a survey, investors have lost more than ten lakh crores of rupees in such unregulated fund mobilisation schemes.

            Further, there was a session on National Pension Scheme (NPS) by Mr. Mukherjee, Senior member, NSDL, E-governance division and Mr. Karamjit Singh jointly where features of NPS and its prospective was discussed. Mr. Deb Bhattacharjee Assistant General Manager, SEBI talked about Role of SEBI as a Regulator. After three sessions, a question answer session was made open for the participants and participants asked lot of questions on personal finance which were satisfactorily answered by the experts.

            At the end of the program Prof. Mandeep Kaur Head University School of Financial Studies and Convener of the webinar gave votes of thanks.