By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE) – Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Investment One Financial Services Limited Friday officially announced its acquisition of the Nigerian International Growth Fund (NIGFUND) formerly managed by Fidelity Bank Plc; as it records 35 percent (35%) growth Year-to-Date (YTD) in the fund.

Abimbola Afolabi-Ajayi, Head of Corporate Services of the firm disclosed this at a press briefing to announce the acquisition of the and subsequent management of the fund by Investment One.

“YTD we have been able to record 35% growth in the management of the NIGFUND and approximately 16% growth rate in terms of subscribers’ base.

Afolabi-Ajayi said the current value of the NIGFUND is N1.97 billion, “when the acquisition took place November 2012, the value was N3.0 billion, because it was majorly invested in equities by the former managers; you calculate the net asset value based on the current market performance; but as at June and July when the market was up, the value was about N4.6 billion, its measured by the performance of the stock market.

She affirmed that the plan of Investment One in managing the NIGFUND is to attract a lot of attention to it by bringing on subscribers and diversifying into different assets classes to ensure that the growth is steady.

“Our plan is to attract a lot of attention to the NIGFUND by bringing on subscribers and diversifying to different assets classes to ensure that the growth is steady,” Afolabi-Ajayi said.

She further affirmed that the NIGFUND it’s a fund that will generate a lot of capital income for those who subscribe to it, “they will have accumulation units, accumulation units is when investors rather than collect their cash dividends decides to reinvest in the fund,” she said.

According to her, the NIGFUND is a balanced fund where investment is done in equities, real estate and fixed income like convertible bonds, FGN and Corporate bonds.

The trust deed has asset allocation; 40-70% invested in equities, 15-30% in fixed income instruments, another 15-30% in real estate. “If the stock market is down, other assets classes will be up and with this, we will be able to maximize returns,” Afolabi Ajayi affirmed.

‘We are very innovative; we have insightful market knowledge that we are going to bring into the management of the fund.

One of the things we are poised to do is to ensure that we bring investment education to the doorsteps of most Nigerians. We want to get to everybody including the market; women because we believe that they also have funds to invest in unit trust schemes,” she said.

Afolabi-Ajayi said one big advantage of the unit trust schemes is the fact that there are economies of scale and the transaction cost are much lower; if you are going to buy stocks individually, investors will pay more transaction costs; but if its under a fund, the cost to individually investors is very much reduced because the transaction costs are spread across all the unit trust holders.

She said the NIGFUND came into existence in 2002 and up till date, it’s still doing well because of the balanced strategies that have been used to drive it. “We will ensure that we keep to the rules and regulations in managing the fund as stipulated by regulatory authorities,” she said.

Investment One acquired the funds management rights and responsibilities of the NIGFUND from Fidelity Bank. The acquisition was consequent upon the approval of the unit-holders at the ninth (9) annual general meeting (AGM) of the fund and ratification by Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

NIGFUND is an open-ended Unit Trust Scheme designed and managed for the purpose of pooling funds from the investing public and investing it for safety and higher yields. The Fund’s basic strength lies in its philosophy of enrichment by the power of large numbers. It seeks to optimise investors’ returns by leveraging on the enhanced financial power arising from pooling investors’ resources. Thus, the attainable return on investment far surpasses what unit holders would achieve if each investor concerned invested the same amount separately and independently.