Earlier this year, I did something most investors don’t get to do.
I was invited to visit the office of a Singapore stock I own.
I know what some of you are thinking.
Going to an office sounds about as thrilling as watching paint dry.
Cubicles. Chairs. Laptops. The soft hum of air-conditioning.
What is there to see?
Plenty, as it turns out.
For one, there were sleeping pods, so staff could catch 40 winks.
Some worked from home.
None of it was for show.
It was the visible signature of something I had long sensed but never seen up close: a culture built on trust.
The company is iFAST Corporation (SGX: AIY).
The things you learn by showing up
Last week, Money FM 89.3’s Michelle Martin got me hunting for underappreciated growth stocks.
iFAST was one of the names I picked.
The choice may sound odd since the Singaporean fintech is hardly an unknown stock.
Here’s the thing about iFAST that no balance sheet will ever show you.
Roughly three in every 10 of its employees work in IT.
Most people think of iFAST as a brokerage or a fund platform.
The surprise?
It is also, quietly, a software company that builds and controls its own technology.
You won’t find “a culture of trust” or “a deep IT bench” listed in any annual report.
Ergo, some things you only learn by showing up.
Surprised on the upside
In 2020, if you had asked me whether a then-modest Singapore company would be trusted to build Hong Kong’s national pension platform, I may not have believed you.
Yet, that is exactly what happened.
iFAST won the mandate to build and run Hong Kong’s eMPF system — the platform that 4.7 million pensioners will use.
Think of it as Hong Kong’s version of our CPF.
But this begs the question …
… why would a Singapore mid-cap be given such a big responsibility?
Because of the very things you cannot see on a balance sheet: the depth of its IT, and a project leader given the free rein to go and win it.
Then came the encore.
The trustees were so impressed that they signed iFAST up for follow-on retirement-scheme work too.
We did not forecast any of this when the portfolio bought the shares.
No one could have.
And that is the lesson I keep relearning: innovative companies have a way of surprising you on the upside, rather than the downside.
The Sweet Spot of Capital Gains and Dividends
The Smart Dividend Portfolio first bought shares of iFAST in May 2020 at S$1.02 a share.
Today, on 18 June 2026, the shares trade at S$9.13.
That is close to nine times the original buy — and one of seven SGX-listed stocks in the portfolio that have produced returns of 100% or more.
The capital gain is the part everyone notices.
But there’s also a quiet story you won’t want to miss.
When the portfolio first bought iFAST, it paid a dividend of S$0.0315 per share.
Over the past year, that has grown to S$0.0893.
This year, the company expects to pay S$0.10.
Measure that against the portfolio’s original S$1.02 cost, and you are looking at a yield on cost approaching 10%.
Get Smart: Demand quality, not certainty
I’ll be honest.
Holding iFAST was not a smooth ride.
The share price has lurched up and down more than once, and there were stretches where patience felt a lot like stubbornness.
But here is what I have come to believe.
You do not need to predict the future to invest well.
You need to buy a quality business and leave room for it to surprise you in ways you cannot yet imagine.
The eMPF win couldn’t be predicted ahead of time.
Neither could the dividend nearly tripling.
Both happened because the business was built on things you have to go and see for yourself.
So the next time you weigh up a stock, don’t ask whether you can forecast its future to the last decimal point.
Ask whether it is the kind of business that tends to surprise you on the upside.
That question is one of the threads running through the Smart Dividend Portfolio – iFAST is one of seven such stories in the portfolio alone.
The rest are for another day.
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Disclosure: Chin Hui Leong owns shares of iFAST Corporation.
