First Capital Wealth Fund vs NAMAL Income Fund

First Capital Wealth Fund is run by First Capital Asset Management Limited and NAMAL Income Fund by National Asset Management Limited, so this compares two houses as well as two funds. Both are income / fixed income funds licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka, which means they are doing broadly the same job, and the differences below are differences in how each house has chosen to do it.

The clearest difference is the management fee. NAMAL Income Fund charges 0.60% a year against First Capital Wealth Fund's 1.10%, a gap of 0.50 percentage points. On LKR 100,000 held for a year that is about LKR 500 more retained by a holder of NAMAL Income Fund, before any difference in what the two funds actually earn. The fee is deducted from the fund's assets before the unit price is struck, so it applies whatever the market does — which makes it the one number here that is knowable in advance.

Over the 180 days to the date shown, First Capital Wealth Fund returned +2.86% against NAMAL Income Fund's +0.92%, a gap of 1.94 percentage points. That is one window: a different 180 days would very likely order them differently, and neither figure predicts the next six months. Both are price returns on the bid side and exclude income a fund distributed rather than accrued into its price.

Both have moved by a similar amount, with annualised volatility of 2.18% and 1.86%. For two funds in the same category that is the expected result, and it means neither has taken noticeably more price movement than the other to arrive at its return.

Among the 19 income / fixed income funds we price daily, First Capital Wealth Fund ranks 15th on 180-day return and NAMAL Income Fund 19th, against a category median of +3.71% over the same window. On fee they sit 19th and 12th cheapest of the 19, where the median is 0.50%. On how much the price has moved, First Capital Wealth Fund is 16th steadiest and NAMAL Income Fund 15th.