If you work in Indian financial services, someone has probably pitched you both of these in the same week. A colleague at the bank swears the Chartered Wealth Manager (CWM) got him his private banking role. A planner you follow on LinkedIn has CFP after her name and says nothing else compares. Both cost real […]
Ask ten people how big a retirement corpus should be and you will hear the same answer ten times: 25 times your annual expenses. It is a tidy number, easy to remember, and it fits in a WhatsApp forward. Almost nobody in that forward chain can answer the three obvious follow-up questions. Where does the […]
Every week someone walks into my classroom or messages me with the same confusion. “Sir, I want to get into finance. Should I do NISM?” And when I ask “which NISM?”, the answer is usually a blank look. Or worse, “all of them.” I understand why. The official NISM list has over 30 examinations, named […]
Every batch I teach in Ahmedabad, the same thing happens in the first week. A student, usually someone already working as an MFD or a bank RM, asks me some version of: “Sir, which is the best fund right now?” I ask them back: “Best for whom? For what goal? Held in what proportion, next […]
Here is a situation I hear described almost every month, usually by someone who has done well in life and badly in meetings. Say you are a 45-year-old business owner in Ahmedabad. Your bank relationship manager says the market is risky right now and suggests a “guaranteed” insurance-linked plan. Your mutual fund distributor says equity […]
Every year around results season, my inbox fills up with the same question, asked two ways. From students: “Sir, 12th commerce ho gaya, ab kya karun?” From parents: “Beta B.Com kar raha hai, uske saath kaunsa course best rahega?” Here is the uncomfortable truth I share over chai with every one of them. There is […]
Ask a friend why he bought his latest mutual fund and you will usually get one of three answers. It gave 40% last year. It has five stars on some app. Or the most honest one: someone in the office WhatsApp group said it’s good. India’s mutual fund industry crossed ₹87 lakh crore in assets […]
Sit down with me for a minute before you pay anyone a coaching fee. Every year I meet candidates who chose their CFP coaching the way people choose a phone case. Whoever showed up first on Google. Whoever’s counsellor called back fastest. Whoever promised “100% pass guarantee” with the most confidence. Six months later some […]
Every week I meet a student or a working professional who asks me the same question, usually a little apologetically: “Sir, the FPSB fees are already high. Can I just register directly, study the material myself, and clear the exams without paying a coaching institute on top?” It is a fair question, and it deserves […]
Every week, someone asks me some version of the same question. “Sir, CFP karne ke baad salary kitni milegi?” And every week, I watch people get misled by the answers floating around the internet. Neat little figures like “CFPs earn ₹X lakh per annum,” presented with total confidence and zero sourcing. So let me do […]
If you’ve been googling “CFP course details 2026” and getting a different answer on every website, you’re not imagining it. The CFP® certification in India has changed meaningfully since mid-2025. Exam fees went up, a brand-new mandatory Psychology module was added to the pathway, the overall pricing structure was revised effective 31 May 2026, and […]
Short answer: India had about 1.79 lakh individual mutual fund distributors (MFDs) as of March 2026, and for the first time slightly more than half of them sit outside the top-30 cities. Nobody publishes city-level counts, so we queried AMFI’s public “Locate a Mutual Fund Distributor” tool city by city and compiled the numbers ourselves. […]
