First Asset Management (formerly FBNQuest Asset Management) Review - Halal Finance Products

History and ownership. The firm's story is the story of Nigeria's oldest banking group reorganising itself. FBNQuest Asset Management launched the FBN Halal Fund on 4 May 2020, riding the first wave of Nigerian sukuk funds. In September 2024 the group divested FBNQuest Merchant Bank, leaving the asset manager as a direct subsidiary of the holding company, and shareholders approved renaming FBN Holdings to First HoldCo Plc on 14 November 2024, confirmed by NGX bulletin on 5 March 2025. The asset manager became First Asset Management Limited, SEC-registered as a fund and portfolio manager, and the SEC's weekly data now lists the product as the First Asset Halal Fund even though the fund pages retain FBN branding. The firm operates from 16 Keffi Street in Ikoyi with offices in Abuja and Port Harcourt.

Product shelf. First Asset Management runs nine mutual funds covering money market, bond, balanced, equity and several dollar strategies, plus discretionary portfolios and liquidity management. The Halal Fund is the only Islamic vehicle on the shelf, an open-ended fixed income unit trust with ₦5.21bn in assets and a NAV of ₦152.87 on the fund page, and a live homepage ticker quoting ₦153.91 with a 14.26% yield at 3 August 2026. The stated strategy invests in asset-backed structures: sovereign sukuk, corporate sukuk, Ijarah, Murabaha, Musharaka and Mudarabah contracts, with an explicit commitment to avoid conventional fixed deposits, treasury bills and commercial paper. Minimums are retail-friendly at ₦5,000, the holding period is 90 days, and income accrues daily but distributes just once a year. A detail worth crediting: the prospectus is published in both English and Hausa, a genuine accessibility step for northern investors that no major rival matches.

Shariah governance, honestly assessed, is thin. The fund is classified by the SEC as an Islamic Fixed Income Fund and its non-interest-bearing mandate does the structural work, but the public pages name no Shariah supervisory board, no advising scholar, no annual Shariah audit and no purification methodology (verified 2026-08-04). The named individuals are the portfolio managers, Ifeoluwa Dixon and Tutu Owolabi-Kadiku, competent professionals but not Shariah authorities. In practice the halal case rests on the SEC classification plus the certifications embedded in the underlying instruments, chiefly FRACE-certified FGN Ijara sukuk. Investors who require scholar-level verification will not find it here; those satisfied with mandate-level compliance get a clean, well-documented mandate.

Fees, returns and operations. The 1.50% management fee sits inside a published 1.70% total expense ratio, and publishing the all-in number outright is more fee transparency than most of the category offers. Custody with Standard Chartered Bank separates client assets credibly, and the FGN 3-year bond benchmark, while conventional, gives a familiar yardstick. The operational irritant is the web estate: the beyondtoday subdomain, the new first-assetmanagement.com site and legacy FBNQuest pages coexist with slightly different numbers, so verifying current terms takes more work than it should. The 90-day lock-in and annual distribution rhythm are the practical constraints, pushing returns into NAV growth rather than cash flow.

Verdict. The FBN Halal Fund is a solid mid-shelf choice: cheaper than United Capital and ARM, backed by Nigeria's oldest banking franchise, custodied at a global bank, and honest about its terms. What it lacks is exactly what Lotus Capital sells, verified scholar governance, and what income seekers want, regular cash distributions. Use it as a low-cost accumulation vehicle inside a First-branded relationship; look to Lotus for governance-led core holdings.