Plugging perception gaps.

The image of National Investment Trust Limited (NIT) is of stuffy stained offices with creaky chairs occupied by overweight balding men in suits who know little about technology and care even less about customers. This does not describe NIT at all.

NIT, a wholly-owned government asset management (AMC) when it was first formed in 1962, is now partly-private, partly-public with the government holding 40 per cent of its shares. It is run entirely as a private sector entity, a point which its Managing Director Adnan Afridi took some pains to point out.

'We recruited young fresh talent and developed an app, one of the best in the industry, along with introducing new products. Our efforts are reflected in its returns,' says the 52-year-old Harvard alumnus and a former managing director of the Pakistan Stock Exchange.

But NIT has seen its share of bumpy times. 'The Security and Exchange Competition wanted the industry to develop. There are two ways to do that: increase the size of the pie or capture the market away from the existing player. A little bit of both happened,' he says.

In terms of returns and technology, there is a lot more to NIT than meets the eye

Regulatory changes forced NIT to give up some of its share to competitors. One example was the rule that more than 10 per cent of the pension fund cannot be invested in one AMC at a time when NIT had, in some cases, 30-50pc of pension funds.

Other than regulatory changes, Mr Afridi lays the blame for the significant decline in market share during the mid-2000s on misguided government appointments of top management.

But it is a different picture now. 'In the last three years, our funds have ranked consistently in the top three, in all categories,' he says, outlining the success NIT has achieved during his tenure.

Assets under management (AUM) is the total market value of the investments that an entity handles on behalf of investors. In the five years preceding 2019, the year Mr Adnan was appointed by the government as the managing director, NIT's AUM had gone down by Rs30 billion to Rs60bn. Today, NIT's AUMs stand at Rs160bn.

Since the Mutual Funds Association of Pakistan (MUFAP) does not incorporate separately managed accounts (SMA) in its numbers, the figures available on MUFAP's websites are understated he explains. 'NIT has the largest single SMA account in the country: Rs60bn. We...