Building a Sustainable Independent Financial Advisor Model in India's Rapidly Changing Mutual Fund Environment

The Indian mutual fund Industry has witnessed a slew of changes initiated by Sebi with a view to protect the individual mutual fund investor since 2009, beginning with the removal of the entry load.The distribution segment has witnessed changes leading to development of new models. The Independent Financial Advisor (IFA) segment in particular has been deeply affected and has seen a substantial decline in the number of active IFAs. This paper traces the development of the IFA model in Indian context, discusses the model adopted by other distribution channels namely Banks currently. The paper further outlines a model for making the IFA segment sustainable. The paper analyses primary data of IFA studies undertaken at two different points of time during the course of the last 3 years and thereby constitutes an exhaustive research work for this segment.