[SINGAPORE] Digital bank and wealth management platform iFast is targeting a payout ratio of between 25 and 30 per cent as profitability improves across the business.
“We have come to a stage where we feel comfortable that we can start to increase the dividend more significantly,” said CEO Lim Chung Chun at a briefing on Monday (Jul 28).
This has resulted in an expected dividend per share of S$0.08 for FY2025, a 35.6 per cent increase from S$0.059 in FY2024. The second interim dividend of S$0.02 per share for the first half of 2025 is also an increase of 33.3 per cent from the second interim dividend of S$0.015 in H1 2024.
“As the balance sheet gets bigger and bigger, then we’ll probably feel more comfortable in increasing the dividend payout ratio,” said Lim.
Customer accounts in iFast have crossed the one-million mark, and customer deposits in iFast Global bank hit S$1.5 billion at the end of Q2 2025, a growth of 45 per cent year on year.
The company is holding fast to its Hong Kong guidance, with a net revenue target of over HK$1 billion (S$163.27 million) in FY2025 and profit before tax of over HK$380 million. Net revenue for H1 2025 stood at HK$403.7 million and profit before tax for H1 2025 stood at HK$163.7 million.
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The Hong Kong business is expected to perform better in the second half of 2025, as iFast expects to onboard all the Trustees of MPF – the Hong Kong retirement savings scheme – onto the eMPF platform by the end of the year.
The eMPF platform is a central and integrated electronic platform to standardise, streamline and automate MPF scheme administration work.
“The bulk of the eMPF business will be onboarded by the end of the year, so correspondingly, we expect that the revenue and the profitability will actually be increased,” said Lim.
Operating expenses in Hong Kong are also expected to ramp up as hiring increases to cope with the incoming volume, with each subsequent quarter of 2025 being higher than the last. As revenue increases with more onboarding, iFast expects that profitability in the second half will be better than the first half.
A decision has also been made to prioritise the eMPF business in Hong Kong, delaying Orso – a Hong Kong pension scheme – to next year rather than Q2 2025. As a result, the Orso business is only expected to start contributing early next year, with the current Hong Kong guidance taking that into account.
The China segment of iFast’s wealth management business has also seen losses narrow in H1 2025, falling to a loss of S$1.8 million from a loss of S$5.9 million in FY2024 and a loss of S$7.2 million in FY2023. Lim attributes this to cost management and reduction as well as improvement in revenue for the segment.
A China desk was launched at the end of last year by iFast in a bid to serve more offshore Chinese money, and complement its onshore business in that country. The offshore business is progressing well, and staff from China have relocated to Singapore to staff the desk, said Lim.
“We are aware that there’s still a level of performance that’s still not good enough. We certainly want to work towards profitability, the current expectation is that we will be able to narrow losses further in the quarters ahead and get into profitability,” he said without disclosing a target date.
Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities are also being built up at iFast, with an AI innovation centre set up at the end of 2023. The AI capabilities will be focused on the bank, with the need to transcend any language barrier given the global nature of the bank.
“You want to be able to serve customers from around the world who are using different languages, but if you want them to bank with us in one or a few locations, then the use of AI will actually be very important in the long run,” said Lim.
