The international financial media Asian Investors magazine held the 10th Southeast Asia Institutional Investment Forum in Singapore on December 5-6, inviting financial industry professionals to discuss how to prepare for the next recession. Maggie Ng, the founder and CEO of FinEx Asia, was invited to share how to seek stable returns in an unstable world on December 5th.
It is the topic draws great interests and feedback due to the great volatility in almost all asset classes this year. While investors are to review their current investment portfolios and adjust the asset allocation for inevitable market downturns and pressures in the short to medium term, the common question is besides cash, is there any investment that may contribute better returns in the uncertain world?
Maggie shares the features of US consumer credit as an investment class and explaining why many institutional investors have turned their attention to consumer credit. In her speech, she also shares FinEX Asia’s expertise in managing the such risk in portfolios selection. Such expertise has successfully creating alpha value to FinEX Asia’s investors in Asia. FinEX Asia manages to create investment products that are low to no correlation to most asset classes with stable returns.
FinEX Asia Marketplace Credit Fund was launched in October 2017. Since its inception, the fund has achieved a yield of 7.39%, and it’s 2018 YTD performance is 5.55% with annualized yield of 7.42%. The performance is particularly standing out while 85% of the major asset classes are in red. Maggie further points out that consumer credit has long- term being a major part of asset allocation of bank balance sheet and asset managers have started exploring adding this asset class into their portfolio. It is not a new asset class; however, the development of technology makes investing into US consumer credit more accessible for professional investors. Consumer credit asset is unique in fixed-income investment tools and has became the next major asset.
There were a sequence of forums hosted by Asian Investor in Singapore. Following the Southeast Asia Institutional Investment Forum, on December 6th, the 6th Family Office Forum Southeast Asia brought together influential family offices from around the region in an intimate setting to discuss their challenges and their plans for asset allocation.
Maggie, in the Family Office Forum, shared FinEX Asia’s footprint in private equity investment. Maggie pointed that Asia outperformed the other markets in the growth of high net worth segment both the number and the asset under management. This group of investors is not satisfied with standardized products offered by the banks and has growing demands into more diversified products that will provide them the target returns that they are looking for.
With the adoption of technology, FinEX Asia managed to help the clients to invest into private equity with smaller amount that could help them to better diversified their investment portfolios. A wide range of expertise is required to be successful in private equity investment, said Maggie, and these skills included industry knowledge, financial modelling, risk control, familiarity with legal and compliance regimes. FinEX Asia’s past investments in various US and Asian companies have demonstrated that combining such skill sets with the technology to enable the investors more access and more transparency of their investment will pay an increasing role in providing the HNWI the investment returns they seek for.
