The Hindu Business Line : OptiMix bets big on new financial planning service

OptiMix, the multi-manager division of ING Investment Management, is counting heavily on `OptiMix Net', which is partly positioned as a financial planning service that its distributors can use.

The service will enable intermediaries to perform a number of tasks, including those related to construction and management of model portfolios. Besides, it will allow them to capture customer database and manage their back offices.

Mr Ashvin Arora, Director of OptiMix, said OptiMix Net will be offered to intermediaries as an enabling tool and will be priced in an optimum manner. The idea is to create better scope for distributors who are willing to sell OptiMix's first multi-manager product and the others that are expected to follow.

"While we are not saying that it will be absolutely necessary for distributors, we think they will find enough value in it," Mr Arora told Business Line when asked about the plans that OptiMix intends to pursue. Intermediaries, he added, have expressed interest in the proposal in view of the potential of multi-manager fund of funds (FoFs) in the Indian market.

OptiMix Net, said Mr Sumeet Vaid, CMO of OptiMix, has been created as a Web-based platform that will ultimately take financial planning to customers. "Each investor should benefit from the asset allocation that is best suited to his or her need," he said, adding that the maiden OptiMix product will aim at blending the "best of breed" options selected from among many equity and debt funds.

OptiMix Income Growth Multi-Manager FoF, as the scheme has been named, will be distributed initially like other new fund offers, to be followed up with normal on-going sales, Mr Vaid said.