AmInvest on Malaysia’s shifting investment landscape

Transcript

The Malaysian investment landscape has changed significantly in the last decade. It now offers rich opportunities and is developing into an international marketplace for Islamic finance. World Finance speaks to Datin Maznah Mahbob, CEO of AmInvest, to discuss how to negotiate this market.

World Finance: Well Datin Maznah, how does the Malaysian investment landscape stand today? And what are the main opportunities it presents?
Datin Maznah Mahbob: In view of the recent correction in the financial markets along with a lot of other emerging markets, we’ve had a similar correction in our debt market as well as our equity market as a result of falling oil prices. And I believe that this actually provides longer-term investors with an opportunity to position in our market at this time.

There has been a flow of funds back to the developed markets

World Finance: Well AmInvest provides investment solutions for global investors across a full spectrum of asset classes, so what trends are you seeing?
Datin Maznah Mahbob: There has been a flow of funds back to the developed markets and the stronger currencies, as a result you can see the correction in emerging markets in Asia and there has been a correction in the fixed income markets and bond markets in general. And a trend towards equities in fact, as the global economy is showing signs of recovery.

World Finance: Well Malaysia is of course a leader when it comes to Islamic finance. So what fund management services do you offer in that sector? And how do you see the market developing?
Datin Maznah Mahbob: We have Sharia-compliant commodities, precious metals, equities, sukuks which is quite broad – not common actually – in terms of choice for the Islamic investor. For global investors we are focusing on what we can manufacture in the Islamic space, and particularly in the ethical space, focusing on our own time zone in terms of active management. So we are offering active Asian equities but for the international markets, we can actually provide global sukuks as well as global developed equities and global emerging equities.

World Finance: The fund management industry is fiercely competitive, how do you stay ahead of the game?
Datin Maznah Mahbob: Our business model is as a fund manufacturer. We deal directly with institutional clients of course, but for our retail investors we work through intermediaries which are third party distributers in that sense, because we are in a way not dependent on our in house group distribution, we have to stay relevant and competitive in terms of our product offering.

World Finance: Looking at your ‘Smart Beta’ methodology now and what are its core features? And how is it best suited to allow you to internationalise?
Datin Maznah Mahbob: We had the objective of delivering competitive risk adjusted return to the investor, in other words a lower volatility fund without sacrificing the return at a lower cost. And in a very transparent way employing strategies which would actually do its best in an economic environment of uncertainty and slow growth. So we believe that that is the situation we are in which could perpetuate for the next three to five years, so we designed strategies that would actually benefit from that.

World Finance: And finally what are your plans moving forward?
Datin Maznah Mahbob: We will be launching this fund very soon, perhaps at this time of airing it should be launched by then. And we are busy engaging with partners that will help give us the reach to the end investor in the countries that we are targeting.

World Finance: Datin Maznah, thank you.
Datin Maznah Mahbob: Thank you very much.