Invest in equities, structured debt: Sriram Iyer, Religare Wealth

Sriram Iyer, CEO of Religare Wealth Management, has asked investors to mark up exposure to equities gradually over the next few months. The strategy is to buy good quality stocks at dips. The wealth manager is neutral-to-positive on mid-term debt, positive on structured hybrids and negative on real estate.

Religare Wealth Management manages (advisory role) portfolio assets worth Rs 5,500 crore. Iyer spoke with ET’s Shailesh Menon. Edited excerpts:



Rich clients' speak: The market has been very volatile over the past few months; so many of them are sitting on the fence, waiting for the right time to re-enter. If you look at point-to-point equity returns over the past six months, you may not have made any money. The market is almost at the same level where it was six months ago, despite the volatility.

On the traditional debt side too, there’s nothing really interesting, especially after the 50 basis points rate cut. Real estate is not very attractive at the moment and confidence on gold is very low. Many of them are investing in tax-free bonds on hopes of capital gains when rates go down further in future. So, to round off, investors are looking at equities and quasi-debt products to park their surpluses.

Client recommendation: We are bullish on equities…in fact, our portfolios are overweight equities currently. On the debt side, we are recommending dynamic bond funds and structured debt products. We are in talks with one of our group companies—Religare Credit Opportunities Fund (RCOF)—to structure a real estate PMS (portfolio management scheme) fund for our clients. The real estate debt funds managed by RCOF have yielded 18-20% returns; we would like our investors also to gain from their expertise.

New investment ideas: Religare Global Asset Management (another group company) has an AIF vertical by the name ‘Cerestra’, which looks at investment opportunities in socially relevant ventures. This vertical focuses on education assets like schools, prep schools and higher education institutions. We may try to showcase some of Cerestra’s offerings to our clients in future.