Jennifer Mendes’s MFD firm has grown from 90 cr AuM in 2012to 1030cr now – 11x in 11 years, far outpacing the industry’s 7x growth in this period and way ahead of most MFDs across the country.
You don’t need huge sales teams or complex and costly technology to achieve the kind of scale that the Mendes family has achieved. The mother-son duo continue to be the only client facing members in the team offering portfolio guidance to over 4000 retail clients. They are ably supported by strong service teams across their 3 branches in Mapusa, Margao and Vasco and sensible and well executed processes that ensure highest levels of client engagement.
The Mendes mantra for success and scale as an MFD is as follows:
1. Have passion and conviction in your profession –know that you have the capability to make a huge difference in the lives ofretail savers and go about doing this with missionary zeal.
2. Have fire in the belly driven by your conviction– attitude will give you altitude. Else all you will see is obstacles and roadblocks.
3. Clarity on your chosen segment – they chose retail middle class families and have stayed with this segment for 4 decades
4. Client centric process (goal-based investing)over product centric approach (don’t run after NFOs and flavour-of-the-season products). This involves a one time initial onboarding effort but far less of ongoing time discussing products and markets, thus enabling scale.
5. Hard work and relentless execution: Schubert puts in 10-12 hours of work each day, engaging 20 clients every day – whether on phone or in person, to ensure that all clients feel well served. He is in touch with all A category clients once a week, without fail.
6. Work with clients to a level where they start seeing corrections as opportunities rather than threats – do this and you will have enough time to build wallet share from existing clients as well as bring in new clients.
Schubert has set himself a target for the next 10 years of financially empowering 100,000 middle class savers. Do good for your clients and the rest will take care of itself.