Exclusive Interview with George Mitra, Co-Founder and CEO of Fintso

Fintso is Wealthtech's first focus on enabling the eco-system to serve the Retail and Aspirational segment in India. This segment sometimes referred to as "Bharat" is estimated to have 200 million households with 70% living in Tier 1 and beyond. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with George Mitra, Co-Founder, and CEO of Fintso.

Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers

Fintso is Wealthtech's first focus on enabling the eco-system to serve the Retail and Aspirational segment in India. This segment sometimes referred to as "Bharat" is estimated to have 200 million households with 70% living in Tier 1 and beyond. Fintso is structured as a B2B2C solution for this segment and is focused on giving access to retail investors by digitally empowering financial product agents/distributors to effectively service their clients – taking care of their back-, and mid-and front office needs. Fintso helps enhance their business by providing multi-product access, increasing client engagement, and marketing support to help increase the SoW of the client base they serve.  The platform uses AI and Machine Learning to provide recommendations and model portfolios to enhance the capabilities of the Agent/distributors.

With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?  

The retail / aspirational segment is growing rapidly given the economic growth as well as the financial inclusion that has accelerated over the last decade. Due to the low financial awareness, high need to trust the source of advice, and active handholding to make savings a habit, they need to have a "bridge of trust" to help them in this journey.

Fintso, as a next-generation B2B2C startup, aimed to scale financial entrepreneurs and enable them to serve this segment across the country.  The wallet size is estimated to be over INR 600 trillion, but is heavily fragmented, in terms of their needs as well as geographically. By providing up-skilling, more products and services that they can offer, and using digitization to increase their outreach, Fintso aims to enable the over 3 million existing infrastructure of agents/distributors to do more and for more, of this segment.

Founded in 2020, Fintso now serves 3400 such agents/distributors, who cater to 1.6 mn retail investors with an aggregate Asset of over $ 18 billion. These investors are spread over 530 districts across India.

The company acquired WealthMagic, a SaaS provider in the wealth management space in late 2021 to further enhance its capabilities and enhance its footprint.

With only 1 financial product provider for every 17,000 citizens in India, there is also a need to increase the number of agents/distributors, especially beyond the metros and large cities. To build this segment, by making independent financial entrepreneurs a viable career option, Fintso has launched a program for students – to provide the training, help in certification, and an active internship program. This provides an alternate career option to students who are passing out – as well as providing a bridge for the people who need help the most.

Fintso's physical model – will be a key to making a difference in Bharat – helping them take the crucial steps to become financially more independent.

Brief us about the proactive Founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions to the company and the industry. 

Founded Fintso with Rajan Pathak.  Rajan and I bring over 50 years of cumulative experience in the wealth management industry with Fintso.

Before founding Fintso, George Mitra was the CEO of Avendus Wealth where he scaled up the business to manage over $4 bn of client assets. He was also associated with Deutsche Bank for 13 years. In both his roles, George addressed the needs of HNI s and UHNI s. DeDemocratizinghe the learnings to help the retail segment using technology is what drove George to start Fintso.

Rajan Pathak is Co-Founder and MD at Fintso. He has been the brain behind setting up the B2B arm of Bajaj Capital Ltd. and one of the founder members of the IFAN Finserv Pvt. Ltd. -IFAN (Erstwhile ING Financial Services Pvt. Ltd.). He is also a licensed financial advisor and was also at the forefront of launching India's 1st financial literacy TV Channel to create the credibility of financial advisors and offer an opportunity to end consumers to interact with India's top fund managers.

Please brief us about the products/services/solutions you provide to your customers and how they get value out of it 

"You are Independent, but not Alone" is Fintso's promise to its Subscribers. In essence, they act as the backbone of the business that the independent agents and distributors do. This encompasses all aspects that will help them grow their business – from access to a wide suite of products, recommendations and model portfolios using AI/ML, digital execution capabilities, reporting, and a client-facing app for their clients. At present, Fintso provides access to all Mutual Funds in India, curated Equity Baskets, curated baskets of global equities / ETF s, and corporate FD s. Insurance (both life and general) and Loans against securities are soon to be launched on the platform as well.

Services that help the subscribers, as well as their clients, including digitizing their historical business and transactions, up-skilling support, recommendations, and model portfolios using algos, as well as a fully secure cloud-native app for their clients and them to conduct their business.

Fintso actively works with other fintech companies to integrate products and solutions that suit the needs of the retail base of investors that they serve.  Some of these integrations have resulted in truly democratizing product access that was limited to the HNI segment earlier.

How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead? 

At present, the overall penetration of financial products of individual wallets is predominantly Savings / FD s. Further, the penetration of financial instruments beyond the Top 30 cities is very low. Given the fact that 70% of the population lives in Tier 1 and beyond, this shows the extremely low penetration, especially in the retail / aspirational segments.

This segment is largely under / unserved, with existing Wealth management players, as well as B2C wealth tech firms focussing on the Affluent and HNI space (estimated to be ~ 30 million households).

To address the needs of this vast majority (~ 200 mn households), being digitally enabled would be key – but with physical touch. To act as the crucial "bridge of trust" to help take their first crucial steps.

With the ubiquitous presence of smart / feature-rich phones, independent agents/distributors can do a lot more with their existing clients as well as increase their coverage. Fintso would act as the holistic provider of this solution, using data-based insights to help enable the last mile connecting.

What is the edge your company has over other players in the industry?

Fintso's entire team has deep domain experience in the Wealth industry, having worked in both B2B as well as B2C space. Understanding the needs of the business as well as the investors is crucial to providing custom solutions using the latest technology for delivery.

Fintso is working in partnership with other fintech companies – that are focused on a vertical solution, to create a full-stack horizontal solution.

Fintso's solution allows the Agents/distributors to retain their identity – a crucial aspect in the rapid acceptance of the platform. It does not work on the "broker / Sub-broker" model addressed by a lot of players – which, effectively, removes the independence that the financial entrepreneurs desire.

How have you seen the evolution of the industry? As you said that you have been here from the beginning, how has the growth been?    

India remains highly under-penetrated in all financial metrics – be it in terms of MF s, insurance, or even the number of advisors. As financial inclusion increases and the aspirations of people grow, being able to address ways to meet their goals would become more and more crucial.

As financial manufacturers increase and competition among them increases, being able to access the largely untouched market would become even more crucial. Building their network of agents/branches is not economical for companies, especially given the geographical dispersion. A collaborative system, to access the same person across products/needs, using digital enablers, will be the next phase of Wealth management in India.