Monday, April 13, 2015

25 YEARS OF TIA !

Congratulations TIA ! The long term capital gains of this Tamilnadu Investor Association is immeasurable.  25 years is not a  small time frame for an Organisation of this stature which is well diversified in its Membership.. Its more special because TIA is celebrating it along with the Regulator who also completed their Siver Jubilee last year only. Therefore this is not only the time to look back with pride but also a time to retrospect, take stock of the achievements and ponder over other issues to be addressed for TIA to march forward.

One such critical issue where TIA can step in is to improve the efficacy of the IAPs or Investor Awareness Programmes. Thanks to SEBI huge sums are spent on the the Investor Awareness Programmes by the Exchanges and Mutual Funds. No doubt they are doing a commendable job of spreading the awareness about the importance of saving and investing wisely. More than a decade has passed since these types of initiatives are undertaken. IAPs have now become integral part of the Exchanges. Therefore it is time now for us to evaluate the efficacy of these mode of IAPs.

Lots of money is spent in conducting these IAPs and much more efforts are made in to bring in the investor population to listen to the Speakers. The venue decides the type of attendance in many cases and the quality of the speakers decide the quantum in many cases. In many of the semi urban centers, the initial response these IAPs got couple of years back is slowly receding and results in much lower attendance. After inviting a high profile speaker, the Organizers run helter skelter to bring in the crowd. Most of the time they resort to requesting a nearby college to send in their students “voluntarily” to fill up the chairs and to avoid embarrassment.

There is another issue; Many of these meetings see repeat audience, year after year; New faces are hardly seen. So IAPs end up catering to the same audience again and again. Its fine to some extant but if the investment habit has to spread to the next generation, we need to look beyong the existing investors. 

Therefore, this mode which was successful in the last decade has to be re-looked at, while continuing with these IAPs, a more efficient way of reacing out to new investors while addressing the need of the existing investors in a sustainable manner needs a proper thoughtful consideration.

This is where the role of Investor Associations come into play. The role of Associations like TIA is critical and they can be involved in instituting a research to study the efficacy of these IAPs and how this money can be more effectively used, jointly with Academic Institutions of repute like IITs and IIMs under the aegis of SEBI and the Exchanges. It will help the Exchanges to spend the money more productively in achieving their goal of educating every citizen of India to be a responsible investor.

In this regard, a permanent physical infrastructure may be setup in the four regional centers  including Chennai by SEBI and the Exchanges, jointly with TIA wherein there will be Library, Class Room and a Meeting Hall for these IAPs. It may not cost more than a few crores which infact will be much less compared to the money spent otherwise and will result in bringing in more new investors fro next generation by involving the colleges around.


In this 25th year, TIA should impress upon the Regulator and the Exchanges to invest in this permanent infrastructure which will be jointly managed by TIA as per the SEBI guidelines under the guidance of the Exchanges. It will lead to more responsible investing by the educated investors and result in achieving prosperity as a nation.