Manish Hingar is the Founder and CEO of Financial Hospital. He is a CA by profession carrying more than 15 years of experience in Consulting, advisory market of Tax and Financial Industry in India. He is responsible for running all the facets of the business and his expertise is in providing customized innovative solutions with unmatched speed provides a distinctive edge to the groups capability.
In conversation with Dominic Rebello, Manish says the company's 'Customer First' vision has percolated to all the levels in the company and is the prime reason why our customers trust us with something as sensitive as their financial assets.
What is the idea behind Financial Hospital?
Financial Hospital works in a B2C (Business-To-Consumer) model. Our success mantra has always been the customer centric products and services that we provide. Our experience of over a decade has made us understand the human mind deeply with regard to the way that one looks at financial and tax advisory. Our customers have been with us since the time they enrolled with our services because of our vision of “Customer First”. This vision has percolated to all the levels in the company and is the prime reason why our customers trust us with something as sensitive as their financial assets.
What are the qualities of a successful financial advisor?
In India, a Financial Advisor traditionally means an agent, a broker or a distributor of various wealth products. I think Advisory is different from Distribution. Financial or Wealth Advisory starts with “Why Should I Invest?” not from “Where Do I Invest?”
In India we see a big opportunity in the wealth and financial advisory space. In short, a successful Financial Advisor should have the following qualities:
1. His/her advice should be unbiased
2. He/she should be able to understand the financial goals and risk appetite of the customer
3. He/she should be able to handle a person’s emotional attachment to their goal. In India, Financial Planning is different from other parts of the globe. Here people are strongly attached to every goal. Be it ones daughters marriage, or buying a home as soon as one is married – these issues take priority, and people put critical assets, like their Provident Fund (PF), at stake or invest heavily in gold without weighing the pros and cons of the future market value of that asset
4. A sense of responsibility that somebody’s retirement, child’s education, marriage, or some other critical goal, is in your hands, and that it is their life’s earning which you are dealing with
What is one crucial step that you believe will influence your company’s financial budget?
It is always the acceptance of failure and learning from it that gives one the strength to move forward. I believe that as the CEO of a company, one should always keep an eye on 3 things: one’s employees, one’s customers and the cash flow. When moving ahead, one has to take care to maintain proper cash flow, as any slip up will disturb it. As a result, it will affect one’s entire enterprise. However, as I mentioned before, failure can only lead to further learning and betterment.
Your mission...
Our mission is a clear one. We want to create a market for wealth and tax advisory in India, where people feel free to raise their queries and concerns. We want to provide pure consultancy with complete professionalism and transparency.
What do you anticipate which will have the greatest effect on company’s margins, and why?
In the Distribution and Advisory space, introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning will surely be a game changer. Any company not looking to shift to a more tech savvy model will have a hard time in the future. At Financial Hospital, we pre-empted this move and thus have an in-house IT Team ready to keep up to speed with these changes in the wealth and advisory spaces.
What was your turnover in 2018 and the growth expected ahead?
Our Group turnover was 3.85 crore, and we’re completely focused in our aim to achieve 15 crore in FY 2018-19.