NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund vs Senfin Shariah Income Fund

NDB Wealth Islamic Money Plus Fund is run by NDB Wealth Management Ltd and Senfin Shariah Income 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 Income 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 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.

Their 180-day returns are close, +3.42% and +3.06%, which is common between two shariah-compliant funds holding similar instruments over the same stretch. When returns converge like this, the fee and the price variability below are what actually separate the two over time.

Both have moved by a similar amount, with annualised volatility of 0.55% and 0.70%. 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.

Senfin Shariah Income 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.