Tea with Sivagnanasundaram Jeyavarman

Bio-data

Sivagnanasundaram Jeyavarman

Personal Details

Date of Birth - October 3, 1954

Nationality - SriLankan

Civil Status - Married with three children

Religion - Hindu

Highlights

Twenty-five years of corporate level experience at very senior management level in the financial services sector in Sri Lanka.

Served in important committees of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Ministry of Industrial Development, Core Group On Financial Market Development under the Ministry of Finance and the Capital Market Cluster under National Council for Economic Development (NCED)

Significant knowledge in fund management, treasury management, fixed income, Securities dealing, risk management, product innovation and marketing of financial Products

Working knowledge in information technology system implementation and Internet.

Professional Qualifications:

Fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (FCA)

Obtained first merit award in the intermediate level examination

Fellow member of the Society of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka (FSCMA)

Work Experience

From July 1975 to February 1981

Wickramasinghe Dayananda, Chartered Accountants and Company Article Trainee

From February 1981 to March 1982

Forbes & Walker Ltd

Accountant

To March 1982 to April 1990

Forbes Money Brokers Ltd

Manager/Managing Director Money Brokering

Forbes Financial Services Ltd.

Director

From April 1990 to date

National Asset Management

Investment Manager

Asset Management Ltd.

Deputy General Manager and CEO (Since 1998)

Forbes Money Brokers Limited and Forbes Financial Services Limited are member companies of Forbes and Walker Group. National Asset Management Limited (NAMAL) is a member company of DFCC Group. Established the money broking and asset management entities from scratch and both companies became market leaders in respective areas.

Professional activities

President of Unit Trust Association of Sri Lanka

Examiner for 'Security analysis and Portfolio management' of the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka

Member of the JICA working group for industrial development in SriLanka

Representative member of Ceylon Chamber of Commerce

Member of the Y2K committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka

Member of the Taxation and Continuing Education Committee and past member of the Best corporate award Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka

Member of the Capital Market Cluster of the NCED

Current Functionalities

Management of human resources

Developing new products and its marketing

Responsible for the entire operation of the company

Strategy formulation and its implementation

Represents in the Board of the Company

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Hathoon Sheriffdeen

S. Jeyavarman studied at Mahajana College, Thellippallai, Jaffna upto his Advanced levels. In 1975 he joined Wickramasinghe and Dayananda and Company as an articled clerk.

After the completion of his four years of the article he joined Forbes and Walkers Company as an accountant, and was promoted as Managing Director of the Forbes Money Brocking Limited.

Q: When was NAMAL started ?

A: National Asset Management Limited (NAMAL) is a public Liability limited company established by the DFCC Group in 1991. NAMAL is the first Fund Management Company licensed by the Colombo Stock Exchange to manage the equity funds in Sri Lanka. It's not a listed company,

NAMAL was formed to manage others' money to achieve the investors' objective professionally.

Q: How does asset management companies work?

A: The Company was formed to connect investors and the capital market. These companies improve the accessibility of capital market instruments to the investors.

Companies involved in asset management should follow and comply with good ethical practices to fulfill investor interests, and comply with the laws related to the equity market.

These companies conduct investment research on equity and potential investments, which are under valued, invest on those on a long term and allow those to grow over time.

Q: How many funds have you so far?

A: We have already launched seven investment funds, which are National Funds, NAMAL Growth Fund, NAMAL Income Fund, NAMAL Optima Fund, NAMAL Money Market Fund, NAMAL Flexi Income Fund and NAMAL Amana Fund.

NAMAL was the first asset management company, to launch the first equity fund to the Sri Lankan market.

Q: What do you think of the awareness of people about the capital market?

A: I think it's much less. The knowledge about the capital market of the public is very much less.

Professionals in fund management, accounting and banking and some experienced business people are mostly involved in the capital market.

The Unit Trust Association is the Apex body in Sri Lanka for all the fund management and awareness creation.

We also promote the capital market through various presentations and direct marketing.

We do this awareness creation on personal requisition. Even individual requisitions are considered. We are always willing to work with the Chambers and other business associations in Sri Lanka by arranging awareness programmes to their members.

Q: What are the factors people should be aware to invest in the capital market?

A: The funds invested in the capital market should be long term investments. It should be at least for five years. That gives a return on the investment.

Investors should be aware of the risk incorporated in the investment. When invested through Asset Management companies, they take the maximum care of their clients' investments. Investors can start their savings with small amounts. They can start with Rs 1000 and can increase their savings gradually.

It's successful that the funds invested in the capital market are done on a diversified manner. The capital can be invested on one investment mode and the dividend gained can be invested on another mode of investment. The stock market fluctuates in the short time period.

It is always steady and moving upwards in the long run. That's the reason we ask investors to hold their money for a long time.

Q: How do you protect investors from bearing risk?

A: First of all I should say that all the staff at NAMAL are knowledgable about the laws enforced on asset management companies, and they are dealing with other people's money.

NAMAL has been working in this field for more than 10 years in the capital market and our continuous research does not allow bad companies to fall in to our investment portfolio. These factors enhance us to take correct decisions on time.

On the other hand our staff are qualified in the field. These qualities have helped us to be on track so far.

Asset management companies specially invest on diversified investment portfolios. At least, we invest on fifteen to twenty capital investment modes at a time. This diversification of funds eliminates the risk borne by investors.

Our continuous monitoring process on the companies helps us to take damage control measures.

There is another risk involved in the capital market, called stock market risk. In this situation all the companies listed in the stock exchange will go down. We allocate this risk by Asset Allocation Decision (AAD).

When the macro economy and political developments affect the stock market, the management takes AAD.

That is, we withdraw our investments during that time and keep that fund in liquid form. This is the most important decision we take to protect our investors' funds.

Apart from that, we cut down our exposure to market when the country is not doing well by becoming much conservative at times.

Q: What are your charges from customers to provide these services?

A: We charge only two types of fees from our services, to manage the investors' fund. One is the two per cent entry fee on their investment and the other is ranging from 0.75 per cent to 1.5 per cent management fees charged annually on their net asset value.

Q: What are the future plans of NAMAL?

A: The next investment opportunity we are planning to offer the market is a retirement investment plan. This can be the first step of NAMAL in 2008.

This will target workforce investments on EPF and ETF and call another on top of it to invest through our funds.

I think we will design this mode of investment by considering the age and the tolerance of risk. We will be giving different plans, where people can choose according to their interests. We want to tie-up with various organisations to increase the accessibility of capital products islandwide.

We are in the process of speaking with the banks to get intermediary services. Web enabled services will be provided in future. These services are especially in terms of information about the investors' investments and other potentials.

We are also looking forward to work with investment coordinators to reach the investors.

We would like to invest outside the country but the Colombo Stock Exchange does not allow us. That will eliminate the Sri Lankan risk bearing at large.

Q: What is your financial position?

A: We started the business with a strong capital of Rs 135mn. Profit up to September 2007 our pre-tax profit is Rs 11mn. Our main income is management fees on investments.

The fund size of total investment available in the market is Rs 3.2 billion, which included the amount of private funds managed by us.

Last year Namal's performance growth was 11.5 per cent.