Indiantelevision.com Team

(31 August 2006 3:00 pm)

MUMBAI: The findings of the ACNielsen Winning Brands Mutual Fund study have revealed that SBI Mutual Fund has the strongest Brand Equity Index of all funds in the study, followed by ICICI Prudential in second place, while last year's winner, UTI, slipped into third position.

"Our Winning Brands model identifies three major drivers of brand equity, namely awareness, consideration and image. In the past, India's mutual fund market has been a relatively undeveloped category driven simply by awareness, but it has now taken a step forward, where consideration is also now playing a key role in driving brand equity. Our study found consideration to be the most important driver of choice this time round," said ACNielsen India champion of financial services research Nipa Parekh .

"With such keen competition today, mutual fund brands need to work harder on the quality of awareness to drive consideration. Creating media noise is just not enough to secure strong brand equity. Indian investors are more sophisticated than ever, and are now looking at their overall comfort levels with fund houses. It is therefore very important that any media noise a brand creates is driving consideration levels, as well as saliency."

Both SBI MF and Prudential ICICI have strong 'awareness to consideration' ratios, indicating that the level of awareness created by their composite marketing activity is working positively towards conversion from 'knowing to considering,' the study confirms.

Higher return (58 per cent) and opportunities to claim tax benefits (54 per cent) in certain mutual fund schemes (ELSS) tilt investors towards mutual funds. Equity-linked savings schemes are reportedly popular amongst Indian investors because of the dual advantage they carry of tax savings as well as high returns.

Investments in mutual funds are the most favorable option for 71 per cent of respondents who are currently investing in the funds/stocks market, followed by life insurance (72 per cent), adds the release.

"Tax benefits attract many investors towards these schemes. Even conservative investors are willing to take chances by investing in these high-risk equity funds, to avail themselves of the tax benefits they offer," added Parekh.