As reported by newspapers, the Unit Trust of India (UTI) will leverage intra-group synergies across its mutual fund operations, commercial banking, and brokerage ventures, to evolve into a financial services powerhouse.

In a bid to improve investor perception, UTI has taken a leaf out of its private sector counterparts in the mutual fund (MF) segment. It has resolved to offer products and services targeted at investors based on past preferences. It also plans to employ its distribution network to market third party products and cross-sell products like life insurance, brokerage services and banking products.

UTI is taking steps to get closer to its customers and wants to lower the level of dissatisfaction that is currently prevailing among investors. UTI has realised that if does not look after its investors, someone else will.

For a long time UTI's image has suffered due to negative investor perception. But this didn't really affect UTI as it was the largest MF in the country, and the MF investor had very few investment options, other than UTI. But over the past twelve months, the investor is faced with a plethora of private mutual funds. These funds have created an impact on investors with a higher level of transparency and better returns. They have shown the UTI investor what he has been missing out on, all this time.

UTI seems to be getting its act together and is vying for investor attention along with the private funds. While these steps will help boost UTI's image considerably, what UTI really needs to do, is offer returns at par with the private funds. This is the only thing that will stop investors from exiting UTI's schemes in such large numbers, as UTI has been facing fund outflows more due to lower/negative returns than anything else.

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