Mutual fund companies typically charge investors distribution fees, such as 12b-1 fees in the United States, which they then use to pay commissions to brokers. We evaluate a major Indian investor protection reform that limited the ability of mutual funds to charge distribution fees to pay broker...

In December 2010, the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh passed a law that severely restricted the operations of micro-finance institutions and brought the micro-finance industry to an abrupt halt. We measure the impact of micro-credit withdrawal in this unique natural experiment and find that...

This paper presents two approaches that use publicly available data to estimate the loss to investors from mis-selling of insurance products. The first approach uses the number of lapsed policies from the annual reports of the insurance regulator, IRDA, while the second method uses the...

This paper examines the existing implementation of the National Pension Scheme against the goals with which it was created. It finds that there are certain critical areas in which the NPS has deviated. These include multiplicity of schemes, lack of investment choice, low transparency of the...

This paper examines who contributes and who persists in contributing in a national, voluntary, defined contributory pension program, where the government provides the incentive of matching contributions of a minimum amount (USD 16). The paper uses proprietary data from a financial services firm...

What is the role of financial regulation in the field of micro-finance? This paper identiles two features of micro-finance which call for unique treatment in policy considerations as compared to policy thinking in the mainstream body of financial law. These features are credit recovery and the...

In response to the Second Micro Finance Crisis in Andhra Pradesh, which took place in October 2010, the Ministry of Finance has pro- posed a new Micro Finance Institutions (Development & Regulation) Bill. This paper undertakes a detailed analysis of the draft Bill in terms of both economic...

Financial distribution, where the distributor is the agent of both the product provider and the customer has been found to inherently work against the interests of customers, in the form of high service fees and perverse incentives in sales practices. This paper proposes segregation of financial...