An investor awareness webinar was organised on 19th April, 2022 jointly by Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) and Post Graduate Department of Chemistry

An investor awareness webinar was organised on 19^th April, 2022 jointly by Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) and Post Graduate Department of Chemistry, Khalsa College, Amritsar on Wealth Creation Through Personal Financial Management. Dr. Baljinder Kaur Randhawa, Head, PG department of Chemistry formally welcomed Shri Surya Kant Sharma, keynote speaker of the webinar. The webinar was inaugurated by Dr. Taminder Singh Bhatia, Dean Academics of the college. He delivered the presidential address and welcomed Shri Surya Kant Sharma, Senior Consultant AMFI. At the outset, he touched upon the importance of financial security of the individuals. Shri Sharma emphasized that an investor should ensure adequate life insurance, reasonable medical insurance cover and an emergency fund before embarking upon the journey of wealth creation through sustained investments which is most essential for prosperity. He then made a vehement plea for regular savings with an annual increment of 10%. He then dealt in detail on the need for wealth creation for prosperity. He emphasized that investors should not be money accumulator but wealth creator which only would make them comfortable with regard to their money needs for their different milestones in life. 

He then advised participants that they should look at real return and not on notional return as inflation and tax liability substantially takes away major portion of notional return. He cautioned participants that most of the investments except in governmental schemes have risk but risk can be managed by simple formula - Think, understand and invest. He also emphasized the need to have financial planning of their families in place for focused investment and also the need for practicing rule of compounding in investments for higher return in long run. 

He then shared basic information on various investment avenues available in the market viz. Government/RBI bonds, corporate bonds, Government schemes (Post office schemes, PPF, NPS, Sukanya Samriddhi Scheme), real estate, gold and securities market. All these avenues are different and have distinct features and investors should invest their hard earned money according to his/her risk appetite and time horizon of investment. 

Shri Sharma cautioned general investor not to enter into securities market directly as there are inherent risks in the market and unless the investor have sound knowledge of market, various sectors, economy, international economy etc. he should desist from entering into the market directly. Instead, mutual funds are the best option available for general investor wherein he/she can invest a minimum amount of Rs.500/- though Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) and built a good corpus over a period of time. He also mentioned that in mutual funds there are number of schemes as per risk appetite and time horizon of investors. There is a wide spectrum of mutual funds schemes ranging from equity funds to debt funds to exchange traded funds which can be chosen by an investor as per his risk apatite and investment horizon.

At the end, he emphatically cautioned participants not to invest their hard earned money on the advice of others including agents and never in unregulated fund mobilisation schemes - Ponzi scheme, chit funds and committees etc. which give assurance for higher and quick return at the beginning but ultimately vanish with the hard earned money of investors. Not so affluent classes of investors are more susceptible to such allurement and we all have a social responsibility to achieve. He made the participants aware about the menace of such schemes and impress upon them not to invest their money in such schemes. He also informed that as per a survey, investors have lost more than ten lakh crores of rupees in such unregulated fund mobilisation schemes.

After the session, a question answer session was made open for the participants. The speaker satisfactorily answered to a number of queries raised by the participants.

At the end of the program Dr. Amit Anand, Associate Professor, PG Department of Chemistry, passed on votes of thanks.