NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund vs Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund

NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund is run by NDB Wealth Management Ltd and Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund by Senfin Asset Management (Pvt) Ltd, so this compares two houses as well as two funds. Both are shariah-compliant 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. Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund charges 0.60% a year against NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund's 0.80%, a gap of 0.20 percentage points. On LKR 100,000 held for a year that is about LKR 200 more retained by a holder of Senfin Shariah Balanced 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, NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund returned +3.42% against Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund's −7.52%, a gap of 10.94 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.

They have not moved by the same amount. NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund has annualised volatility of 0.55% against Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund's 15.14%, meaning Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund's unit price has swung roughly 27.8 times as much day to day. Volatility describes how the price has behaved, not how likely a loss is, and a fund that has been steady can still fall.

Senfin Shariah Balanced Fund opens at LKR 1,000 where NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund requires LKR 5,000, so for a smaller first investment only one of the two is available at all.