Saib BNP Paribas Asset Management Company, a leading asset manager in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, has announced the signing of a distribution agreement for a selection of its mutual funds with Derayah Financial.

Saib BNP is a joint venture with Saudi Investment Bank and BNP Paribas Investment Partners, a leader in the European asset management industry, with assets of euros 325 billion ($462 billion).

As a consequence of this agreement, Derayah will distribute Saib BNP Paribas AMC’s Sharia-compliant mutual funds to individual investors through its online mutual fund supermarket.

Radi Al-Haddad, chief executive officer of Saib BNP Paribas AMC said, "We are excited about this opportunity to add more distribution outlets to our mutual fund products, which should make our top-performing family of funds available to a wider audience of individual investors."

"This would also enable us to concentrate on our core area of competence, which is hiring the best managers to serve our clients and consistently beating our performance benchmarks as we have done in the past."

Mohammed El-Kuwaiz, the managing director of Derayah said over the past months we have been building a single distribution platform that offers Sharia-compliant mutual funds from different managers.

"So naturally we are enthusiastic about adding Saib BNP Paribas AMC’s products to our platform, as from our independent analysis, they have the top performing Murabaha and Trade Finance Fund over the last 5 years. In fact recently Zawya nominated their Saudi Equity Fund as the Number 2 Fund on several parameters consistently over the last 3 years,” he stated.

Saib BNP Paribas AMC’ products are now offered on www.derayah.com and will be available for lower minimum investments starting from SR500 ($133.5).

Derayah is the only one-stop-shop for individual investors in the Middle East. It offers the first independent on-line platform where individuals can invest in over 60 mutual funds from 7 different asset managers, as well as obtain transparent information, research and advice to make informed investment decisions.-TradeArabia News Service