Publications
MARKETING MONOGRAPH: Understanding Financial Literacy Levels in India
(June, 2008)
The standard of financial literacy in the Indian retail investor base is one important determinant of the financial behaviour and financial preferences of retail finance customers. In this brief we discuss a possible approach for considering this issue and present some of the headline findings from the Invest India Income and Savings Survey 2007 on a variety of financial literacy indicators that were measured in the survey.
MARKETING MONOGRAPH: Market Scoping for Mutual Funds in India
(June, 2008)
The retail mutual fund investor base is quite small at an estimated 5.3 million individual investors in 2007. A major explanation for this is low awareness levels of mutual fund investment opportunities in the retail investor base more generally. Take-up rates of mutual fund investments among the aware investor population are encouragingly high and if other investors with similar financial profiles to mutual fund investors were aware of mutual fund opportunities the size of the existing mutual fund investor base presently might be three times higher.
MARKETING MONOGRAPH: Regional Shares of Income Growth in India
(June, 2008)
This brief estimates the trend in real incomes in different Regions of India between 2004 and 2007. The analysis identifies by Region the extent to which the benefits of strong economic growth have percolated down the income distribution and makes observations on the underlying regional economies concerned.
MARKETING MONOGRAPH: Impact of Remmitance on Rural Poverty
(June, 2008)
Remittances in India’s case represent some 3% of GDP and as a result have significant economic and social impacts. IISS Dataworks proprietary data show that receipt by households of remittances has only a marginal impact on income inequality in rural India, as measured by Gini Coefficient, but significant impacts in terms of both the poverty gap and squared poverty indices. It establishes that that domestic remittances reduce the depth of poverty as well as the severity of poverty in rural India to a greater extent than international remittances because in the Indian context international migration is undertaken mainly by economically better off individuals where the incidence of poverty at the migrant household source is anyway lower.
RETAIL MARKET: The Sleeping Giant: Private Pension Markets in India
In this Report we present evidence from the Invest India Dataworks Income and Saving Survey (IISS 2007) that sizes and segments latent demand for pensions as a guide for government and commercial interests alike in considering pension business opportunities in the country. What this reveals is that at the present time there are over eight crore workers who see the need for, and value of, a voluntary contributory retirement savings system.
If latent demand for pensions from these groups were fully harnessed, Indian workers would contribute an estimated Rupees 57,000 crore to the NPS in the first full year of operations. Up to 20 percent of these workers (1.6 crore workers) we believe are prime prospects and likely to start saving for their retirement as soon as appropriate products are offered to them.
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RETAIL MARKET: Financial Services Demand and Utilisation by India's Low Income Workforce
This Report is the most comprehensive expose yet of the financial condition of India’s economically marginalized households. The Report shows that as the living standards for others continue to rise, the quality of life of these workers are likely to decline as they are pushed further to the margins of the labour market driving them deeper into poverty.
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