As one of Kuwait’s leading and longest standing investment houses, National Investments Company has always been in a strong position to grow and develop a market-leading wealth management business, supported by the financial power and investment expertise of the broader group.
Over the past few years, the firm’s wealth management business – which it refers to as the wealth management sector – has achieved such a status across the wealth segments and especially among the country’s ultra high net worth clients, supporting its award in this category.
At the core of NIC’s offering – which boasts over 2,000 clients with total assets under management of about $4 billion – is the bespoke service, strategic advice and investment solutions it provides its clientele, together with a powerful, comprehensive and digitally innovative investment platform.
The span of investment products NIC offers is impressive. These range from mutual funds – including the AlWataniya Investment Fund, AlDarij Investment Fund, Zajil Services & Telecommunications Fund, Mawarid Industrial & Petroleum Services Fund, and AlMada Investment Fund – to investment portfolio solutions such as discretionary and non-discretionary portfolios, custody, NICTrade, and alternative (private equity) investments.
Such a range is attractive, but UHNW clients are always looking for more from their wealth manager. NIC understand this, and in the last year has brought a number of innovations which have delivered this additional value.
One innovation in particular was the NIC IPO portal, an online onboarding system for clients interested in participating in local company listings. The portal was launched in April last year, and a month later, its success was demonstrated on Ali Alghanim Sons Automotive Co’s KD1 billion IPO. Some 1,466 registration forms from the investors were filed via the portal within five business days, enabling NIC to onboard 90 new portfolio accounts in under 10 days during the subscription period.
In addition to this, NIC has also launched the NICTrade application, enabling clients to directly connect to their non-discretionary portfolio accounts and execute trades in over 80 stock markets in several asset classes, and the Client Portal application, enabling clients to review their account statements and retrieve reports in real-time.
The next step is to further enhance the Client Portal by enabling client requests, updating KYC information continually, and offering them investment banking advice and services.