NAMAL Growth Fund vs NDB Wealth Growth Fund

NAMAL Growth Fund is run by National Asset Management Limited and NDB Wealth Growth Fund by NDB Wealth Management Ltd, so this compares two houses as well as two funds. Both are equity 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 Growth Fund charges 1.50% a year against NDB Wealth Growth Fund's 2.25%, a gap of 0.75 percentage points. On LKR 100,000 held for a year that is about LKR 750 more retained by a holder of NAMAL Growth 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, NAMAL Growth Fund returned +0.18% against NDB Wealth Growth Fund's −10.46%, a gap of 10.64 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 17.23% and 16.63%. 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 15 equity funds we price daily, NAMAL Growth Fund ranks 2nd on 180-day return and NDB Wealth Growth Fund 12th, against a category median of −4.51% over the same window. On fee they sit 7th and 13th cheapest of the 15, where the median is 1.50%. On how much the price has moved, NAMAL Growth Fund is 5th steadiest and NDB Wealth Growth Fund 4th.