India’s wealth “is just a drop in the ocean: much more to come.” Say family office, Client Associates.

Himanshu Kohli of ‘Team CA’ or Client Associates based in four locations in India, is one of the founders of a family office launched in May, 2002. Their offices are in Gurgaon, New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The partners in the business, Arjun Gupta and Rohit Sarin, along with Himanshu, spent many years in corporate finance, investment banking and private banking before setting up Client Associates. Himanshu, who also worked at Merrill Lynch in Delhi, echoes a global view. “We started the company to step away from the sales pressures that are ever present in banks. It enables us to have better relationships with larger clients.” He says. The concept has worked out well with frequent accolades and partnerships including a recent award for Best financial advisor of the year from CNBC TV18 where more than two thousand applicants were reviewed.

Himanshu says that historically in India, a few business families held most of the wealth, but this has changed with India changing. “Corporates and professionals like bankers, lawyers, doctors, accountants and entrepreneurs have a lot of private money now.” He explains. “It’s means lifestyles have improved across the board and clients come to us worried that they can’t sustain their spending through their lifetime. This mood has launched many financial product ideas, which is where the need for wealth planning services like ours comes in.” Another trend he’s seen, is in individuals realising they can’t manage their money as well as they thought and so they seek help.

Reports suggest that there are a hundred thousand people in India with more than a $million to invest, but the twenty four people at Client Associates focus on those with more than $5million. “Although we do work with some families with a $million to invest.”

He believes the public estimates of wealth in India are very conservative. “We find lots of individuals and families with around $5million to invest and work with three hundred families ourselves with an average asset base of $4.5million and one of our clients has a company stake worth more than $1billion.” He suspects there is still lots of ‘unlogged’ wealth, then cites a real estate example to support the belief that there is far more wealth locally. “In the Cities we operate from, decent residential accommodation is selling at $2-3million a piece, which makes it impossible if you have only $1million to invest. He identifies lawyers and sports people as particular sweet spots of wealth. “We have many international companies coming into India and the fees that lawyers can charge for instance are high.” Himanshu confirms there are, as many in the private wealth industry have identified, financial education gaps in the Asian region and a general lack of awareness about wealth management. “Things are changing but we have to present the ideas to clients, they usually haven’t heard about it.”

There, are certain challenges even for a local company. “It’s a closed society and many clients don’t want to open up immediately.” He says it can even take up to four years to get clients to open up; and to get to know the family is an even longer process. They are very conservative and you need a lot of perseverance.”

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