KUALA LUMPUR – Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) has announced that its assets under management (AUM) have increased by 3.4% to RM322.6 billion in 2020 from RM312.0 billion in 2019.
PNB group chairman Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz said, despite the extreme circumstances experienced last year, PNB managed to deliver a resilient financial performance for the financial year 2020 (FY2020).
In her presentation on PNB’s 2020 Annual Report today, Zeti said its trust funds also increased to 14.5 million accounts, with more than 200,000 new investors.
“Our income distributions for FY2020 remained competitive and exceeded the benchmarks. Units in circulation across all 15 funds grew by 4.0% to 264 billion units.
“During the year, PNB distributed a total of RM11.1 billion to all unitholders,” she said.
She also noted that, for the more recently concluded income distribution announcement about a week ago, the three variable price funds (ASN Equity 3, ASN Imbang 2 and ASN Sara 1) registered double-digit returns, while both the fixed income price funds outperformed their benchmark, with both the ASB and ASM having consistently generated positive returns, despite negative performance of the KLCI.
The group also made greater progress in portfolio diversification efforts, with its global portfolio group grew to account to 12% last year from 8.5% in 2019.
Income from global equities doubled to RM3.7 billion in 2020 from RM1.8 billion in 2019.
“This contributed 25% to the gross income compared with 11.6% in 2019.
“These diversification efforts were complemented by more effective management of all liquidity and our foreign exchange exposures with the setting up of the Treasury Unit in December 2019,” she said.
In 2020, new offerings were also made, namely Raiz Malaysia, ASN Imbang 3 Global and Minggu Saham Digital, as well as continued enhancement by the introduction of the ASNB Online Withdrawal Facility, Hibah Amanah and ASB Loan Helpdesk.
She said Raiz, the first micro investing app launched in July last year, has garnered more than 220,000 sign-ups with fund under management, having reached over RM20 million as at March 31 this year.
ASN Imbang 3 Global (launched on September 16, 2020), the first unit trust product that invests in overseas financial markets, has been managing over RM850 million from 14,650 unit holders as at March 31.
“The most gratifying achievement was the transformation of the physical Minggu Saham Amanah that took place for 20 years.
“The digital version was enjoyed by millions of Malaysians throughout the country. Previously, only less than 200,000 on average participated in the week-long event held across cities and towns in Malaysia,” said Zeti.
Moving forward, she said PNB will continue to build on the momentum of its Focus 4 strategies towards achieving its long-term aspirations to deliver sustainable returns and prudently safeguarding investments.
“Our motivation for this strategy is to avoid concentration of risk, and most importantly, build a portfolio that can withstand the cyclical nature, the economic and the financial cycle,” she added.
PNB’s Focus 4 outlines the high-impact areas of diversification, value creation, risk management and organisational transformation. – Bernama, April 8, 2021
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