Draft Report of the High Level Group on Services Sector

6.2.3 Asset management

The asset management sector in India has been substantially liberalized and privatized, with full foreign ownership permitted in asset management companies. This has led to robust growth in the sector, with Indian asset management companies competing effectively with foreign players. The key recommendations with respect to the asset management sector are:

1. 
   Improving effectiveness of mutual funds: While mutual funds in India have grown rapidly, they continue to face two key challenges, namely, short-term investment horizon and secondly, relatively low retail participation with a large part of mutual fund corpuses comprising deployment of corporate surpluses. There is a need for a focused ongoing investor education campaign encouraging retail investors to participate in the capital markets through the mutual fund route, as also about the merits of allocation of a portion of their savings to long-term equity investments.
   

2. 
   Rationalising regulations for venture capital & private equity (VCPE) funds: The VCPE investor pool in India comprises primarily foreign investors, and Indian investors are largely excluded from the benefits of this asset class. The reasons for this are two-fold. Firstly, unlike internationally where institutional investors constitute the primary investors in VCPE funds in addition to high net worth individuals, in India the ability of institutional investors like banks, insurance companies and pension funds to invest in this segment is constrained or non-existent. This is anomalous given that banks and insurance companies have the necessary financial expertise to undertake a risk-reward assessment of such investment proposals. Secondly, while foreign investors investing into India need not pay tax on gains from their investments due to the benefit of double taxation treaties, Indian investors in VCPE funds are taxed; through recent amendments to the tax laws, trusts used to pool VCPE monies for investment have been denied tax pass through status unless the investments are made in a few specified sectors. These factors place VCPE funds at a disadvantage to mutual funds, both in terms of access to investors as well as tax treatment. These provisions may be reviewed given the critical role played by VCPE funds in providing longer-term capital for growth and restructuring of enterprises.
   

6.2.4 Pensions reform

Reform in the structure and management of pension funds is a key area of the unfinished reform agenda. Thus far, public sector entities have been invited to manage the pension funds of all new central government employees who have joined employment from January 1, 2004. In this context, it may be mentioned that private sector banks, insurance companies and mutual funds have played an important and positive role in the development and growth of the financial sector. Life insurance companies in India are already playing an important role in the pension sector through group and personal pension products. An appropriate level playing field is therefore recommended. Further, the new pension scheme should be extended expeditiously to unorganized sector employees. Similar reforms should be initiated for the existing government-managed provident funds. Finally, all categories of pension and provident funds should be permitted to diversify their investment portfolios, shifting from the current excessive share of government securities to various categories of corporate debt, securitized paper, and an appropriate proportion of equity investments.¹⁵ Alternate asset classes may also be considered in due course.

The above reforms are essential to achieve desired long-term returns that would provide the required income security to the beneficiaries post-retirement. Unlike the present practice of holding investments to maturity, professional fund management would create active management of portfolios to optimize returns. A diversified mix of assets with varying risk-return profiles would be superior to concentrated portfolios with fixed returns. This has been evidenced across developed and emerging markets. This includes China, which has permitted overseas investments out of its pension funds.

6.2.5 Financial markets

The development of deep and liquid financial markets, comprising equity, debt, currency and commodity derivative markets, is essential for the healthy growth of the financial sector and the economy as a whole, as they facilitate lower transaction costs in economic activity and efficient diffusion of risk. In India, the various markets are at different stages of development. The key recommendations in this regard are:

1. 
   Increasing penetration: Early success due to the introduction of electronic trading in the 1990s should not lead to complacency as the number of participants in the capital markets, whether directly or through the mutual fund route, is still small relative to the earning population of the country. An active and coordinated programme of investor education and spreading financial literacy is recommended. Some of the steps that can be undertaken to start the programme could be: using the unclaimed dividends and redemption amounts of mutual funds for the investor education campaign, amending the SEBI Act to provide that all fines and penalties levied by SEBI remain with SEBI for investor education, mutual fund industry setting apart a portion of their asset management fee annually for the campaign, mutual fund distributors contributing a certain percentage of their commission income and the Ministry of Finance making a budgetary provision for investor awareness and placing the funds at the disposal of SEBI.
   

2. 
   Developing debt capital market: The bond market in India remains limited whether in terms of instrument types and maturities, issuer diversity, investor participation and liquidity. The report of the committee chaired by Dr. R. H. Patil submitted in early 2006, which contains several recommendations for the development of bond markets, remains largely unimplemented. The key recommendations are rationalization and uniformity in stamp duties levied by various states on debt instruments, freedom to banks to issue bonds of various maturities including long-term bonds to finance long-term assets, market making in corporate bonds, reducing time and cost of issuance and expanding the investor base by enhancing the ability of provident/ pension/ gratuity funds and insurance companies to invest in corporate bonds.
   

Securitisation is an important tool for bridging the gap between mobilisers of savings and originators of debt. It can be used to create instruments of varying yield and maturity to suit the needs of different investor classes. It is recommended that the securitization market be developed through affordable and uniform rates and levels of stamp duty, listing of securitization paper and pass through tax treatment to securitization SPVs similar to mutual funds. Further, securitization SPVs should also be permitted to act as counterparties in derivative transactions.

The shelf registration option for debt issuances is available only to a defined category of financial institutions. This may be extended to other issuers, subject to such criteria including rating that the market regulator may consider appropriate.

3. 
   Developing derivative market: The currency and interest rate derivative market is, along with a deep and liquid bond market, the key “missing market” in India. Presently, only over-the-counter (OTC) derivative contracts are available in India and there are no exchange traded derivatives (ETDs). ETDs play a complementary role to OTC derivatives in the development of derivative markets. It is recommended that steps should be taken for trading of vanilla derivative products on existing exchanges, to enhance the liquidity and depth of the derivative market, while structured and exotic products may continue to be transacted on an OTC basis. In particular, exchange traded interest rate futures are imperative to create a meaningful medium term yield curve, as the existing benchmarks are primarily overnight or short-term. Banks and other market participants should be permitted to trade in interest rate futures to impart liquidity to the market.
   

Currently, banks are not permitted to participate in equity derivatives. This may be considered as it would permit banks to better manage risks in their equity portfolios and would also enhance market liquidity. Similarly, banks are not permitted to participate in the commodity derivatives market. This is essential to bring depth and liquidity to the commodity derivatives market.