Askari Income Fund has been assigned a 5-star performance rating by Pakistan Credit Rating Agency Ltd (PACRA), Tariq Rehman, Regional General Manager (North) of Askari Investment Management Ltd (AIM), told media persons here on Wednesday.

AIM is the sole asset management company in Islamabad and a subsidiary of Askari Bank Ltd AIM has already been assigned a management quality rating of AM3 by PACRA. Askari Income Fund started working in December 2005 with an initial capital of Rs 250 million, which now (December,2007) aggregates Rs 14 billion.

Few people are aware of how to invest their money in mutual funds to get maximum profit. Usually, people are hesitant to invest their money in private investment management companies, Tariq said.

Mutual fund is a security that gives small investors access to a well-diversified portfolio of shares, bonds and other securities. Each shareholder participates in the gain or loss of the fund. Shares are issued and can be redeemed as needed, he said.

"The number of our customers is increasing each passing day and as compared to last year, it has increased by 100 percent", he told journalists. PACRA Mutual Fund Performance Rating (star-rating) addresses the investors' needs, by giving mutual funds' star ratings (5-star being the highest and 1-star being the lowest).

The star rating measures a fund's performance not only on the return provided but also its risk profile. Every mutual fund investor has a distinctive set of investment objectives and preferences.

They all usually have some unique risk return perceptions and investment horizons, which makes it difficult to capture these preferences on a single yardstick for guiding the investor's decisions.

This rating provides an initial screening criterion to investors, purely on quantitative measure, without any bias and based on historical returns of a fund relative to other funds in similar category.

He said that AIM emphasises an equitable profit distribution between the small and big investors. Every investor does want to have best returns and the lowest risk profiles. AIM believes in generating returns of more than 11 percent for its investors on monthly basis, Tariq disclosed.

Basically AIM has two funds; one is the Askari Income Fund and the other is the Askari Asset Allocation Fund. The Askari Income Fund is more secure than the Askari Asset Allocation Fund but its monthly return to investors is 9-11 percent while the other fund that deals with stock markets is not as highly secured as the first one, but its monthly return to investors averages 18-25 percent. He disclosed that two new products for investors by AIM will be launched very soon but he refused to give any details in this regard.