Norrenberger Asset Management Limited has urged Nigerians to invest in mutual funds to mitigate the effects of inflation.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive of NAML, Pabina Yinkere, said this during the listing of two mutual funds on the exchange on Tuesday.
The asset management company listed two of its mutual funds, the Norrenberger Islamic Fund and the Norrenberger Turbo Fund, which brought 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 were not only safe havens but also yield higher returns.
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 organisation. 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 platforms such as the NGX. 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 can get quarterly distributions compared to the annual distribution that other funds do.”
On his part, the Chief Executive of the NGX, Jude Chiemeka, stressed the need for more instruments that retail investors could 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 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 out of their investment.
“But beyond that, it also helps to democratise available opportunities, given the fact that you don’t need to have a large amount of capital to start investing through the mutual fund.
Chiemeka said that aside from bringing liquidity and creating additional instruments in the market, over N1tn had been raised to fund various projects that were evident in the country through mutual funds.
“Islamic finance is one of the critical areas that the exchange takes pride in. We have MoUs across different markets, and one of the underlying considerations is how we can deepen Islamic markets. We are in partnership with Islamic Development Bank just trying to train a lot of corporates around how they can utilise that instrument to be able to meet their funding needs.
“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 explained.
Also, the Group Chief Financial Officer of Norrenberger, Mrs Queen Ehi-Uujahman, noted that expanding the financial landscape to be more inclusive was very essential for the economic development of the country.