Invest in Mutual Funds to Beat Inflation, NAML Boss Advises

Samuel Mobolaji

The Managing Director/CEO of Norrenberger Asset Management Limited (NAML), Pabina Yinkere, has urged Nigerians to put their idle funds to use by investing in mutual funds listed on the Nigerian Exchange.

Yinkere stated this during the listing of its mutual funds, the Norrenberger Islamic Fund and the Norrenberger Turbo Fund, which brings the number of listed mutual funds on the exchange to 63 and the ethical funds to five.

Yinkere noted that, with inflation at over 30 per cent, funds should not be left idle but invested in capital market instruments such as mutual funds which are not only safe haven but also yeild higher returns.

Stating that, the goal at Norrenberger is to democratize investment, he said, “we make it part of our mission and our mandate to ensure that there is one Norrenberger product in every household in Nigeria. That is the vision that drives us as an organization. To democratise investments in the country and be able to get valuable products to retail investors.

“Thus we have thought it important to make products available at transparent and efficient platform such as the NGX and it is in that vision that this listing of our mutual funds. Today, we are listing two mutual funds, the Norrenberger Islamic Fund, and the Norrenberger Turbo Fund, which is a Fixed Income Fund. The feature of the fund is that the retail investors are able to get quarterly distributions compared to the annual distribution that other funds do,”Yinkere stated.

On his part, the chief executive of the NGX, Jude Chiemeka stressed the need for more instruments that retail investors can access on the exchange. Commending Norrenberger on the listing of the two mutual funds, he said, “The inclusion of the mutual funds is critical to the growing instruments that investors can trade. GIven where inflation is and also where the MPR is, it becomes really important for retail investors to have access to professionally managed instruments, to be able to get the most of their investment. But beyond that, it also helps to democratize opportunities that are available, given the fact that you don’t really need to have a large amount of capital to start investing through the mutual fund.”

Noting the impact of ethical funds in the country, Chiemeka said, asides bringing liquidity and creating additional instruments in the market, over N1 trillion had been raised to fund various projects that are evident in the country. It is important for retail investors to seek where to put their funds. Retail investors should begin to use mutual funds to access the market.

“Islamic finance is one of the critical areas that the exchange takes pride in. We have MOUs across different markets, and one of the underlining considerations is how we can deepen Islamic markets. We are in partnership Islamic Development Bank just trying to train a lot of corporates around how they can utilize that instrument to be able to meet their funding needs.

“Obviously, the requirements around Sharia compliance type of involvement sometimes creates a bit of challenge for some of the issuers, but we believe that now that you have done it, it only makes it possible for a lot more asset managers to begin to create instruments around Islamic Finance. We do need to have a lot of supply, because, as you know, the demand is there, but there is never enough supply,” he pointed out.