AMFI to launch three new TVCs, featuring Sachin Tendulkar & Mithali Raj, to address key concerns of small savers

The Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) will unveil three television commercial films on Tuesday, featuring cricketing superstars Sachin Tendulkar and Mithali Raj, to address each of the three identified key fears impacting the investors’ psyche - market volatility, new age digital trends and unregulated schemes.

Two of the three new TVCs, featuring Tendulkar and Raj, make small savers aware of the pitfalls of investing in dubious schemes and new-age trends and also encourage them to shift towards formalised and regulated investment avenue like Mutual Funds.

According to a joint study done by the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) and Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA), analysing 15 scams related to unregulated and illegal schemes, more than 10 crore Indians have been defrauded by top 15 pump-and-dump Ponzi schemes in the last three decades, leading to an average loss of Rs 15.27 lakhs per victim. All of them offered unrealistic return on investment which attracted gullible investors.

The first film in the campaign, featuring Tendulkar, highlights how volatility is inherent and embedded characteristic of stock markets, and appeals to investors to simply focus on their goals, and stay invested. Market volatility usually results in investors panicking and ending up redeeming their investments, most of the times, resulting in a loss or reduced profits.

The second film showcases how a young investor, blinded by social media, invests in new age digital trends and ends up losing his life savings. In the video, Tendulkar explains why investors must steer clear of hyped digital trends and focus on a regulated investment option like Mutual Funds.

The third film, featuring Mithali Raj, the captain of the Indian Women’s Cricket team highlights the issue of unregulated deposit schemes which promise double returns and gullible investors, especially women, falling prey. In the video, Raj explains to her friend, who is a victim of such a scheme run by a fly-by-night operator, that Mutual Funds are ideal for regular savers like her because they are time-tested and trusted for years.

A Balasubramanian, Chairman, AMFI, said, “We at AMFI, want to educate small savers to shift towards formal and regulated mode of investments, and opt for Mutual Funds as the preferred investment avenue. Last financial year, the Mutual Fund Industry added 1.09 crore new Mutual Fund investors. A significant section of retail savers voiced their concerns about continued market volatility in the light of various global geo-political events. We wanted a voice of reason, someone who people trust to address the concern and educate them that it is best to ignore short-term volatility and focus on long-term goals. Hence, we chose Sachin Tendulkar, our brand ambassador for this.”

Putting into perspective, the rationale for the new campaign, N S Venkatesh, Chief Executive, AMFI, said, “We realised that a lot of young investors were swayed by the returns offered by new-age digital trends, without realising that these were unregulated. Many of them burnt their hands and their hard-earned money. Also, since a long time, women investors from semi-urban and rural India have been defrauded by fly-by-night operators who run dubious deposit schemes promising very high returns. We wanted to address both these audiences and warn them of the pitfalls and ask them to choose a very well-regulated investment option like Mutual Funds. Sachin and Mithali, given their significant contribution to Indian cricket, come across as the most trusted and popular cricket stars, hence we thought it was best to use them to convey these important messages.”

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