Mutual funds first choice among investors finds survey

The pandemic had its challenges, but one positive in the never normal world was that it got Indians glued to the capital market. In the last two years, since March 2020, the number of active Demat accounts have doubled to 8.97 crore.

A recent investment sentiment survey undertaken by Kotak Cherry found that 90 percent of investors hold mutual funds, followed by 63 percent investing directly in stocks and IPO. Bank deposits ranked third with 50 percent of investors continuing to access this old world asset. It was followed by Digital Gold (44 percent), Bonds (35 percent), Physical Gold (27 percent), Real Estate (26.5 percent), NPS (25 percent) and International investing (17 percent).

The report said there has been a resurgence of a new class of investors, the millennials, who have been unconventional and are disrupting established ideas of wealth creation and the value of money. These go-getters want to accomplish their goals faster and prefer the digital mode for their investment needs.

The survey findings make a strong case for the need of a holistic platform that could aggregate all categories of investment preferences among the respondents from bonds to mutual funds to stocks to international investing.

Nearly two-third of the respondents were comfortable adopting technology for financial services but tellingly, three-fourth (75 percent) of investors surveyed wanted all investment options in a single app rather than using different apps for different asset classes. 60 percent of investors said they are ready to pay for advisory services, with another 35 percent said they would pay for advice if it didn’t cost a lot.

The survey was conducted across three metro cities, namely Bangalore, Mumbai & New Delhi. Nearly 500 respondents participated in the survey, which had 87 percent of respondents in the 25-50 age bracket, with over half coming from the 25-35 age group. While 82 percent of respondents were married with or without kids, 76 percent belonged to the salaried class. Although the market is flooded with several investment avenues today, 57 percent of respondents said they want their app to provide curated investment ideas to help them choose their investments. Similarly, 47 percent of respondents preferred open architecture, where they would like to check suitable investment options across platforms and execute them through their preferred intermediary.