To enlighten the students about Career Opportunities in Finance, the Finance Forum, Department of Finance, ITM Business School, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai organized a guest lecture for the PGDM Finance students on 7th January 2023. It was a very informative and insightful session. Approximately around 150 students participated in this session.
The speaker for the session was Mr. Amitabh Dalal, Vice President, UTI Mutual Fund. He is an alumnus of ITM (2004-2006). He has experience of more than 15 years in the corporate and has been working in institutional sales since 2007.
The session started with how mutual fund industry attained a massive growth. The Mutual Fund industry has seen a five times growth from 7.93 trillion in 2012 to 40,37,561 crore AUM (Asset under Management) in 2022. He explained the main criteria for measuring Mutual Fund industry, which is AUM and how SIPs – (Systematic Investment Plans) pooled more investments into mutual fund.
He gave an overview of UTI, Asset Management company, how it started and thrived. Currently, UTI is one of the largest in-house investment teams with a large investment base. They have an active coverage of 86% of the total market capitalization. They were awarded the “Best Asset Management House 2021: Equity” by Business Today, Money Today.
He gave a brief overview of career options in fund management team where the sales consist of three channels – Bank and National Distributors, Retail, and Institutional Sales. The banking and national distributors are responsible for prospecting, selling, and managing in the assigned region. The retail is the area of responsibility where they would interact with the IFAs, sell the product to them and in turn to retail investors for investing in mutual funds.
He gave a deep insight on institutional sales, where they directly interact with the treasury team from where the money will be invested in mutual fund. They are responsible for identifying the prospects, leading meetings, and closing the sales.
He further explained the opportunities as a Fund Manager. He also gave an idea about the Score Alpha Strategy which is measured based on the runway for growth, profitability (ROCE), and operating cash flows of the company.
Finally, he gave few advice and takeaway for the students to read, network, explore, and prepare for exams like CFA, NISM-VA, etc.
The session ended with an interactive Q&A phase. This was a great initiative taken by the Finance Forum to enrich the students about the career opportunities in finance.