The Startup Guide for Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) provides guidance on the tools and technology needed to start your own financial advisory firm or grow your existing business. More importantly, the products and services covered are free or very low cost as price is a major concern for any advisory company. The guide is broken into 5 parts:

1. Basic Setup – The minimum setup needed to start your advisory firm

2. Getting New Clients – Implementing a social media strategy to attract new clients and using customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track potential client leads

3. Financial Planning – Tools to create financial plans for your clients

4. Trade Execution – How to execute the recommendations on your clients behalf

5. Portfolio Monitoring – Methods to review and monitor the portfolios of your clients

Click to download The Startup Guide for Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs)

Name
Hansal Thacker, Director at Lalkar Securities

Website
http://www.lalkarsecurities.com/

Company Information
Lalkar Securities was started in the early 1980′s and has a pan India presence with a concentration in Maharashtra. They have offices in Pune, Delhi, Jodhpur, and Bangalore which are company owned and the rest are franchises.

Focus of the company
The main focus remains to be the wealth advisory business which requires a broking arm and a distribution platform to facilitate the business. Although many brokers talk about wealth advisory, very few can effectively deliver the performance that is required.

How is the industry changing?
The industry is shifting from “sales” to “skill”. Investors remain in the false assumption that  a buy and hold strategy would continue to grow their wealth. Unfortunately, with the wide spectrum of assets available the industry will be in need of investment specialists who can demystify, analyze and recommend products to their clients. Gone are the days when only HNI’s, trusts and corporate clients had advisors. In today’s volatile markets, everyone is in need of a Wealth Advisor.

Top 3 benefits of MProfit Advisor

1. Consolidation of asset classes – MProfit is one of the few products that can aggregate such as wide spectrum of investments products – stocks, mutual funds, insurance, PPF, EPF, ULIPs, FDs, ETFs, gold, silver, property, etc…
2. User friendly reports – clients can easily understand what the numbers mean
3. Comprehensive portfolio performance tracking – from the main summary screen you can easily see how the portfolios are performing

What is amazing about Manish is just several years ago he was busy writing software code for Yahoo in Bangalore. Then he started JagoInvestor.com and wrote many great articles about personal finance and turned it into a community. His ability to answer every question on the blog and reply to each and every comment is truly commendable.

I received the book a couple days ago and expected to skim a few chapters and tell Manish how awesome it was. However a strange thing happened, I ended up reading the entire book in a matter of 48 hours. I would not recommend you read the book in 48 hours instead take 2 months. Why 2 months? Because there are 7 chapters and I would advise you read one chapter every Sunday afternoon for the next 7 weeks.

At the end of most chapters he has a quick review section he calls “Flashback Learning” and more importantly he outlines a 2 hour action plan.  The 2 hour action plan is what the book is all about. Quit reading, talking and discussing, instead take some action in regards to your personal finances.

Some of the best bits of information from the book:

• page 90 – “You can never get excellent returns with safety in the SHORT TERM; that can only happen in the long term”
• page 128 – he shows a flowchart that I think everyone should make because it visually shows where YOUR money is going
• page 136 – A simple checklist of what your sample portfolio should look like, it’s all about simplicity

Overall the book is great for beginners and I would highly recommend you buy a copy of Jago Investor from Flipkart.

At MProfit we started 2012 with a bang, with the launch of latest version of MProfit Investor (v9.0). But in even bigger news is we launched our second product MProfit Advisor. MProfit Advisor was designed for companies, family offices, HNIs, CFPs, independent financial advisors (IFAs), insurance advisors, investment advisors and sub-brokers.

What’s new in MProfit Investor v9.0?
We have rebuilt MProfit Investor (download) to take advantage of the many new features we have planned for 2012 such as the ability to sync your data with advisors. In addition, you will be able to view your data on tablets and mobile phones (Android, iOS, Windows).

Some of the features you will notice right away:

• Bigger font size of the summary screen
• Many more import options have been added
• Capital gains report with or without indexation for debt mutual funds and FMPs

MProfit Advisor commercially available

Since the launch of our first product MProfit Investor we were receiving many requests from financial advisors, HNIs and family offices.  In 2011, we decided it was time to start working on a new product based on the feedback and what you see today in MProfit Advisor (download) is a result of  it.

MProfit Advisor we designed to be easy to use and cost effective. MProfit Advisor allows you to manage 100′s of portfolios, put your logo on reports, generate overall AUM reports and many other features. In the near future, advisors will be able to share data with their clients in an easy and secure manner.  At MProfit, 2012 is the year we plan to make managing money a very simple task.

Click for a summary of the features in MProfit Investor and MProfit Advisor.

1. Updated XIRR Report: Income column now includes only Income received as Pay-out. All dividend reinvestment and cumulative income are added in Current Value.

2. Import – We have added many more brokers to allow importing of contract notes from Antique, Concept Securities, Dalal & Broacha, Dani Shares, GEPL Capital, Integrated Master Securities, Pragya Securities, RK Global, Skyes & Ray Equities and many more. We have also updated many of the import options as well. (click for a current list of brokers)

How Do I Get The Update?

From the main menu select Help -> Check for Updates. You will need to restart MProfit to proceed with the update.

Please make sure that you have internet connectivity during this process and that your anti-virus software and/or firewall is not blocking the download.

In reality, RupeeCamp is an initiative to get like minded people interested in managing their money and discussing topics to help people get a better understanding of what options are available.

MProfit was invited to talk about “Tools and Technology.” It’s a topic that is dear to us and we were quite excited to participate.  We talked about various ways to track your expenses and portfolio. Things as basic as pen and paper to write down your expenses or using Excel were some of the topics we talked about and how to use them.

Overall, it was a great one day seminar and we are looking forward to the next one. For more information, please visit RupeeCamp at http://www.rupeecamp.com

The latest version 5.4 is available now!  Below are 4 highlights of this release:

1. As the financial year of 2010-11 has been closed, we have improved the Capital Gain Summary Report based on requests from many users. The report now includes period-wise capital gains as required when filing your tax return. The period includes 1st Apr to 15th Sep, 16th Sep to 15th Dec, 16th Dec to 15th March and 16th March to 31st March. This will be useful in determining your advance tax payment for the new financial year as well.

2. New ULIP/Insurance Summary report for individual portfolios, this report was previously available for groups.

3. A minor bug related to display of accrued interest in FD (Payout).

4. Import – We have added several more brokers to allow importing of contract notes from ASE Capital Markets, FundsIndia.com, MTL Shares & Stockbrokers, R. Wadiwala Securities, Saurashtra Capital, Span Caplease and Sunshine Broking. We have also updated many of the import options as well. (click for a current list of brokers)

How Do I Get The Update?
From the main menu select Help -> Check for Updates. You will need to restart MProfit to proceed with the update.

Please make sure that you have internet connectivity during this process and that your anti-virus software and/or firewall is not blocking the download.

With MProfit we currently do not have a module for managing commodities trading. Based on the many request from users of MProfit we have created an Excel sheet for managing your profit/loss as well as accounting JVs till we create a module for commodities trading.

The simple and easy to use Excel sheet helps traders to calculate profit/loss of their commodities trading activity. It also helps them to create accounting entries (JVs) for their accounting purpose. Traders need not enter the full contract values in accounting JVs. They just need the details of the profit/loss for squared-off contracts.

Click to download the Excel sheet for commodities profit/loss and accounting JVs.

There are two broad categories for buying mutual funds: offline and online.

With offline, it means involving paper forms and signatures. There are two main routes within the offline category:

1. Direct from the mutual fund house (also known as the Asset Management Company – AMC)
2. From a distributor or advisor.

If you want to purchase mutual funds online then you have 3 options:

1. Mutual fund company websites
2. Websites such as FundsIndia.com
3. Brokers such as ICICI, HDFC, Reliance Money, etc…(this would require a demat account).

Once you decide which funds to buy and via which route the next step is to manage your investments. That is where MProfit can really help you, since we can aggregate all your mutual fund transactions into a single screen. How do we do it?

No matter where you buy your mutual funds from the record keeper of those investments will most likely be CAMS or Karvy (they are called registrars). We provide an import facility for both CAMS (click for info) and Karvy (click for info). If you setup a SIP for your mutual fund then that data will get updated when you import your data on a weekly or monthly basis.

Once the data is in MProfit you can track your mutual fund performance since we provide auto price updates. Then you can add your other assets such as gold, property, ULIPs, etc…and have a complete view of all your investments. Lastly, you will be able to print reports and take investments decisions since you have a complete view of all your assets.

Features of PPF investments include:

- 100% secured investment, offered by Government of India

- Tax deduction under section 80C
- 8% per annum tax free return
- Withdrawal up to 50% of your balance before the 4 years of the year of withdrawal
- After the end of 15 year period (actually 16 years), the PPF account can be extended for another block of 5 years, indefinitely.
- In an event of bankruptcy, no one can touch your PPF balance, not even Government of India

Below is a quick introduction of how to enter your PPF/EPFs and the type of reports you can generate with it. We show you an existing PPF, how to enter a new PPF and reports you can create to view your PPF/EPF investments.