What Afrinvest funds mgt offers with new Enugu office

...let's have a conversation, company invites public 

By David Desburdes

Fund mangers, and Nigeria's major capital market player, Afrinvest, has opened a branch office in Enugu, maintaining lead with its 46 percent return on every investment.

Introducing it's second branch in the south east, the Enugu branch manager, Emmanuel Eleojo, said that they offer investment services as low as N5,000 to prospectives with the same marginal returns on bigger capitals.

He said that the services are for both the low, medium, upper class and even government institutions, who are willing for conversations.

"Even for elderly men, like pensioners, there are investments that we will advice them to make. So, that kind of training are things we acquired and are pass them to the public. There are so many products that we have:  

"Assets management is not really a product. Assets management business is regulated by Securities Exchange Commission, as a portfolio manager though we have five mutual funds - 

"Afrinvest Investment Equity Funds which from date to date is doing over 46 percent. So many people invested and by the end of the year would have gotten 46 per cent. Say you invested one hundred thousand your profit will be about N46,000 which is quite a big one in terms of looking at the industry.  

"The thing with investment is that people have different objectives. The interesting thing is that you can’t just look at somebody and know exactly how much a person owns. Some people who do business have needs for different things. Basically, our own essence is to say whatever it is that is your investment objective, talk to AFRINVEST. We can always work out something. The idea is that whatever it is that you are, we can work with you. Everybody is at different investment levels, but one thing is that if N5,000 is what you have to invest, our own responsibility is to ensure that, that N5,000, depending on your risk capital is preserved and that you earn interest that is decent on it. 

"The interest is calculated on percentages. Like I mentioned earlier Afrinvest Equity Fund, has returned 46 percent or thereabouts. If you had invested N5,000, you will still get 46 per cent on it. If you had invested one million naira, you’ll still get 46 percent on it. And that’s the interesting thing about investing. So, as much as Enugu is a civil service state, some people still have some funds that would want to grow. One thing we always encourage people to do is to understand that oh you don’t say you will not invest because you think that you don’t earn a lot, whatever amount you have there is always the opportunity if you know what to do. What to do is what we provide. Where to put that money is also what we provide. This is the competence we have built over time, If I speak to somebody and say oh if you put this N5,000, at the end of the year you would have gotten 46 percent of it, that is a decent amount of money. And the thing in wealth building is that since you know what is called compound interest, the idea a lot of people think that you’re going to make money once, meanwhile what really matters is the constituency, the cumulative nature of it. You earn some interest today, you put that interest to the principal back into it, and then you are earning in both the principal and the interest that has come, and that is how and that is how you build your wealth. We say it’s a marathon. 

"So, summarily, for every one within and beyond Enugu state, we have an office in Onitsha, Enugu, and collaboratively, our mandate is basically to meet the investment needs of all the individuals, be they civil servants, business men, corporate government in the southeast belt. So that is our mandate. So, whosoever you are, let’s have a conversation."

What’s the basic difference between Afrinvest and other financial institutions?

When you come to the industry, you have the Capital Market, you have the Money Market. Afrinvest is one of the Capital Market operators. The capital market is being regulated by SEC, unlike the banks that are regulated by the CBN. We are major players in the capital market, while the banks are major players in the money market.  

We drive the money market too. The licence has been given to us, we have the approval of the regulators. That’s where you see treasury bills. They are basically traded on the floor of the NGS in the capital market. It cannot be done through the banks. Basically, the traditional functions of the banks is lending and deposits. But where does those money that are being deposited go? They give them to the capital market to invest. That’s why I said basically that those things are being played on the capital market. Capital market is where firms come to source for funds from the surplus to the deficit.

For a lot of people, they understand current and savings accounts, but most times we introduce ourselves as investment managers. You walk into the banks to make savings, and for us as capital market operators, and what makes us quite different is the way we work, based on licensing and regulations. For instance, you invest money with us chances that you get a higher interest are very high, because while banks are basically for deposits and lending we go to bed wondering how we can sweat it to return the most interest to investors. So this is why I mentioned Afrinvest Equity Funds. We’re are fund managers and so if you are investing with us we are able to give you more decent amount in terms of returns because we are fund managers. We are dealing with you directly. We are very big on investor education, sincerely people find it difficult to deal the things they don’t know, but if you know you probably … For us trust is very important: enough to ask you to put your money - we explain to you that these are the options and in working with you, we help guide and make you make the right decisions. Getting your principal and getting your interest is important and that is what makes the difference. Behind any investment decision we make, is based on research. So research is fundamental to our business so that when we tell you this is what the market is saying, this is what it is looking like and it’s coming from the position of knowledge. And we try to share the knowledge with people guiding them in exactly what to do. Our research team is now preparing a report on the outlook of the New Year, and that way investors will know how best to invest. You need information to make the best decision and and we try to provide you with the best type of information and knowledge that you need and the platform to use to do that and the actual investment to do. 

There are some people who say Investment environment is not optimal, and that is why you see people jumping into scams which is orchestrated by promise to give you 100 or 200 percent on investment. 

Why are Nigerians patronising then, Why are they not coming to you?

There is a saying that if it looks too good to be true, it’s most likely not true. That’s a good place to start from. I think people always want more. Naturally when you hear things like this SEC regulated entity is giving you an 18 per cent, and you hear that somebody is going to give you 45 percent, naturally where will you drift to. So, there is this thing inside us that makes us say oh I want to take the one giving higher percent interest. But what we always do is to let people know is that if somebody is promising you 50 percent; you ask yourself: what is he investing the money in because he is not Father Xmas. He is not going to give you everything that he is making as profit as interest. It means he must have been investing the money into something that is brining more than 50 per cent for him to give you 50 percent. There is a difference between investment and gambling, and speculating. So investing is something that is back with some sort of knowledge gained through research. So what we usually advice people is that if you want to make any investment, go to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates investment They have a website and you can actually go an search. And so if somebody comes and tells you that you can get 50 percent, go and check the name of that company on SEC website. If it is not there, run. There is no product that is not approved by the regulators.  

Products: 

We have fixed income, we have equity. Under fixed income, we have commercial paper, we have bond, for treasury bill, it is government instrument through CBN, The people are given their money to government for use, and you can collect your interest upfront. We have secondary market, and primary market, treasury bill is for government while commercial paper is for blue chip companies. 

Treasury bill is the safest of all investments because it’s guaranteed by the government. We gave federal government bond and we also have federal government savings bond. The limit of federal Govt bond is one million naira that you can invest, The federal Govt savings bond is the one that every Dick and Harry can have access to. The maximum here is N50 million, while minimum is as low as N5,000. If you put your money into federal govt savings bond, at the end of three months, you receive between 15 and 17 per cent interest. 

So a way of recap, there is FGN Savings Bond which you can invest with a little as low as N5,000, there is treasury bills that you invest through Afrinvest, and the minimum in this is N100.00. There is commercial papers which is a million or five million, depending on the offer, and we have mutual funds, we have six mutual funds, for those ones you buy them in units. There is Afrinvest equity funds, plus fund, Afrinvest dollar fund in case dollar is what you want to invest in, which is a thousand dollars, Afrinvest Allowee fund(non- interest investment, and there is Nigeria International Debt Fund, which is the oldest mutual fund in the market. Our core value is to simply wealth.