In short, iFast has not only moved into the big league but the company has also romped past many other existing large caps. iFast’s growth is more remarkable given how most other companies are struggling with the ongoing pandemic. Still, co-founder, chairman and CEO Lim Chung Chun believes digital businesses like iFast will see even greater growth and be valued even higher. “The stellar performance of our share price shows that some of our shareholders are recognising the potential of iFast to embrace digital changes and benefit from these changes, which is expected to continue at an accelerated pace in the next five to 10 years,” says Lim to The Edge Singapore.

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Nevertheless, Lim is unfazed. “We see this as fluctuation that is likely to happen from time to time, especially when comparing quarter-to-quarter results due to volatility in the financial market,” he says to The Edge Singapore. “Markets and investor sentiment do not keep going up in one straight line.” Lim notes that the quarter follows a “very solid” 1QFY2021. “Year on year, the 2QFY2021 results are still far more robust across key metrics of revenues and profits. It is also important to highlight that the company’s AUA, as well as the recurring net revenue, still grew to a record high in 2QFY2021, supported by strong net inflows from investors across different products.” The company’s AUA is indeed impressive, registering a growth of 57.3% y-o-y and 21.4% year-to-date to reach a record high of $17.54 billion as at June 30. Supported by increasing AUA, the company’s recurring net revenue increased 39.2% y-o-y in 2QFY2021 and 34.3% y-o-y in 1HFY2021. “What is key to us is that the overall longterm growth that we are striving to build does not get diminished,” Lim adds. “If investors were to look at how things are going to change for the group in the longer term, we believe that will bring about a very different perspective on how to look at our performance.” Since starting here with the launch of Fundsupermart.com to provide self-directed investors access to unit trust investments, iFast has expanded to Hong Kong, Malaysia, China and India. Fundsupermart.com has since been renamed FSMOne.com to reflect the wide range of investment products on its platform. iFast was first to disrupt the stockbroking industry’s commission structure by offering stocks and ETFs at 0.12% upon its stockbroking launch in 2016, before further slashing the commission fee to 0.08% in 2018. Today, Singapore investors can enjoy a flat $8.80 commission rate on SGX-listed stocks and ETFs. “Singapore is sometimes seen as a saturated market,” says Lim, “but there are areas in the wealth management industry where we see tremendous opportunities across all the key products of funds, stocks, ETFs, bonds and managed portfolios.” iFast also has ambitious plans overseas. On July 31, iFast announced that it had finalised and signed the prime subcontractor contract for the pension project in Hong Kong, which aims to standardise, streamline and automate processes while lowering fees and going paperless.
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According to Lim, this deal in Hong Kong is going to have “a very material financial impact” for his company’s Hong Kong business starting from FY2023, when the project is deployed and up and running. “We aim to, by the end of the year, provide some guidance on the potential growth of our group’s overall Hong Kong business for 2023/2024 and beyond.”
