Andhra Bank to distribute UTI Mutual Fund products

UTI Asset Management Company to open 4 more branches in state

UTI Mutual Fund (UTI MF) today announced an alliance with Andhra Bank wherein the bank will distribute its products at selected branches. UTI Asset Management Company Private Limited, the promoters of UTI MF, also plan to further expand its presence in the state and plan to open four more branches, of which two would be in Hyderabad.

Addressing a press conference, Ashutosh Bishnoi, chief marketing officer of UTI Asset Management Company Private Limited, said: "A few of the mutual funds that we offer have done very well in Andhra Pradesh when compared to the other states in India and looking at the potential of growth we are planning to expand our branches from the present three to seven soon."

He, however, did not mention the time frame by when the new branches would open. "Initially, out of the four two would be coming up in the city for which the locations have been identified. We are also looking at opening more branches in other parts of the state also," Bishnoi said. UTI MF offers 56 domestic schemes and manages Rs 20,000 crore in assets.

"In the last 18 months, we have paid tax free dividends of around Rs 2,000 crore and currently have 8.5 million investors," he said. At present, the company meets the investment, savings and retirement planning needs of its investors through its financial advisors, 56 UTI financial centres, direct marketing and through a tie-up with seven banks.

The company is looking at increasing the financial centres to 110 by the end of the current financial year. Bishnoi said that the initiative to tie up with Andhra Bank was taken to expand and to add value to the company's access network to around 1.3 crore customers of the bank.

Speaking on the occasion, T S Narayanasami, chairman and managing director, Andhra Bank, said, "This is the fourth such tie-up that the bank has entered for the distribution of mutual funds and looking at our past record we are confident of doing well."

According to him, the bank has set itself a target of mobilising Rs 500 crore worth of mutual funds over the next 12 months. "The bank has so far mobilised Rs 75 crore worth of mutual funds for various companies with whom we have entered into an alliance with and out of this we have mobilised Rs 30 crore for one single company," he said.

The bank, he said, envisages the fee based income from various financial service centres for the current financial year to cross Rs 20 crore and the fee based income from the four mutual fund tie-ups to cross Rs 6 crore.

"Around 242 officers of the bank are already AMFI (Association of Mutual Funds in India) qualified for selling mutual fund products and another 236 are IRDA certified," Narayanasami said.