Mumbai: Franklin Templeton Investments is looking at doubling its assets under management (AUM) to Rs 1,20,000 crore within five years.
The fund house, which follows financial year ending on September 30, closed last year with an AUM at Rs 60,000 crore.
"We have closed the last fiscal with our AUM at Rs 60,000 crore and as on February 28, our AUM had crossed Rs 70,000 crore.
"Now, we are looking at doubling our AUM to Rs 1,20,000 crore by September 2019," Franklin Templeton Investments India president Harshendu Bindal told PTI on the sidelines of an event here yesterday.
The company is currently ranked seventh in terms of AUM.
"In terms of AUM, overall we are currently ranked 7th in the country. But, what we track as a company is long-term assets, excluding fixed maturity plans (FMPs) and in that segment we are ranked at No 4," he said.
Talking about the strategy to achieve the target, he said, "In any AMC there are two core areas. First, what kind of performance can you offer, because the investors are choosing the fund and they get impacted. Therefore the focus on both equity and fixed income will continue to be very high.
"Secondly, we are saying can you provide good quality service, both in terms of sales and customer services. We have an in-house transfer agency and we are looking at value addition, that is what the customers and distributors really want and how best we can fulfil them," he added.
In the past, MF industry used to be very advisor-focused. Now, the industry has to look at both, the end-customer and the advisor as well. We are working at expanding the service at every channel possible, he said.
The company is working on both digital and physical spaces so as to provide services to its customers.
"Initially, people used to come to our branches only. Now, we are saying that they can get their job done by visiting our site online. Then they want us to be present on mobile phones, tab and even on social media. So, we are improving our services on both physical space and digital space," he added.
Talking about the company's agents, he said, "We have signed up agents to the tune of 10,000 as of now and we have around 5,000 active independent financial advisors (IFA) out of them. We are offering a mix of upfront and trail commissions to our agents."
Commenting on funds being offered by his company as of now, he said, "At present, we have 30 plus products on the open-end side and we are left with only two close-ended funds and they will also go away."
Talking about the new funds to be launched by the company, he said their range of products is almost complete.
"We will only selectively launch new funds in future based on the market cycle or any new idea," he said.
Going forward, we may launch more offshore funds, that too depending upon the cycle. We are more focused on building scale on our existing funds, he added.
