Jayant Sinha unveils new ET Wealth website, releases Retail Investors' & Consumers' Survey report.

The Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha officially released the ET Wealth Retail Investors’ & Consumers’ Survey (RICS) 2015 report and launched the new version of the ET Wealth website (www.economictimes.com/etwealth) on the magazine’s 5th anniversary. The report is a comprehensive online survey of financial behaviour and practices amongst retail investors and consumers.

“This is an excellent initiative to educate people on savings” said Sinha while releasing the report.

In a dynamic economy, changing consumer trends and habits do not get captured to enable marketers to take appropriate product decisions. Based on these insights, ET Wealth decided to conduct the Retail Investors’ & Consumers’ Survey (RICS). This survey by ETW-RICS has profiled 10,000 consumers making it one of the largest conducted in this domain. The primary goal of the survey is to help product managers and marketers in the BFSI and consumer segments understand their target customers in a better way.

The survey respondents were spread across metropolitan cities, Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns. The poll also saw a fair percentage of respondents from outside India. Respondents shared their answers in a structured, self-filling questionnaire which comprised predominantly close-ended questions. The first (baseline) survey aimed to collect information about the Indian online consumers’ detailed (individual & household) profile, ownership of financial products and services and the respondent’s future plans.

According to the survey, a whopping 97% of the respondents (above the age of 18 years) possessed either a savings or a current account.
The report had some interesting surprises with respect to real estate as an investment: A mere 3% of the people invested in commercial properties, while 53% of them preferred to invest in an apartment or an independent house/plot. A major chunk - 55% - of them had taken home loans.

It is not too surprising that 87% of the respondents owned one or more of the investment products available such as chit funds, bonds, PPF, mutual funds, shares, bank and company fixed deposits. Bank deposits appear to have more money invested in them but mutual funds are more widely held by investors, especially affluent HNI investors. It was eye-opening to know that 49% of the people still regarded insurance as an investment product and claimed to have bought insurance for investment purposes only.

This survey will be followed by another eleven over the next 4 quarters, with each diving deep into a particular product domain such as insurance, mutual funds, real estate, loans etc.A detailed report will be available on the ET website www.economictimes.com/etwealth