Industry Trends: How investment and trading have become more people-centric

<p>With measured growth charting the investment sector, people are slowly opening up to the idea of investing in stocks and other financial services. Sensing a shift in customer segment, financial services firms are gradually fine tuning their processes to better cater to the new breed of aspiring investors. For them, the need of the hour is to employ ‘people-centric’ services that appeal to a wide-range of audience– from investment pros to first time investors, business owners to service professionals.</p>
<p>Today, investments and trading are about getting people invested in the process through easy-to-comprehend programs and tools. Adapting to the trend, financial services firm across the world are taking initiatives to either adjust their exiting platforms for a diverse set of audiences or come up with offerings that are easy to understand and guide prospects better through the process. From easy-to-use trading platforms, Mobile Stock Trading apps to easy-to-understand investment books, financial services firms are building resourceful tools to make trading and investment a more pliable option. At the core of such programs lies the effort to groom a prospect investor about the industry and its processes, empowering them to control and monitor investments better. Such people-centric programs reduce a prospect’s anxiety about the industry and its procedures and present a choice of platform that works best to their capabilities.</p>
<p>Take for instance Kotak Securities – a brokerage firm from Kotak Mahindra Group. It is a pioneer in the stock trading and investment sector and is known to offer many comprehensive financial services. As industry trends indicated a shift in the customer segment, Kotak Securities optimized its processes to tap into the rising ‘aspiration’ of people and better cater to the new class of investors with easy-to-use and easy-to-understand financial services platforms, one of which is the Mobile Stock Trading App – a first for Indian investors.</p>
<p>Citing Kotak Securities as an example to illustrate the shift in the outline of financial services and its platforms, it can be construed that investment sector has augmented to incorporate a more diverse audience segment into its ambit and become a people-centric endeavor rather than an opportunity for a few.</p>