Faisal Mamsa is a skilled finance, accounting and tech professional, currently leading Tresmark Investment. With a distinguished career spanning leadership roles at Dubai Islamic Bank and Standard Chartered Bank, predominantly within the Treasury division, and an early-career foundation established at Ernst & Young Bahrain, Faisal Mamsa brings a wealth of financial expertise to the helm of Tresmark Investment. As the founder and head of Landmark, he has overseen its transformation from a financial advisory firm to a dynamic entity encompassing three innovative tech companies: Tresmark, Rikyas, and Axis.

These portfolio companies, each operating in diverse sectors within the technology industry, stand testament to Tresmark’s strategic vision and Faisal Mamsa’s commitment to embracing breakthrough opportunities. Fueled by a dedicated and talented team, he remains vigilant for emerging trends in the tech space, positioning his organization at the forefront of innovation and growth.

Faisal Mamsa’s past contributions extend beyond traditional financial realms, including advisory involvement in the inaugural listed transaction in the Real Estate sector in Pakistan. Additionally, he played a pivotal role in the introduction and development of Financial Derivatives in Pakistan, collaborating closely with the Central bank through a task force.

Following are the edited excerpts of a recent conversation BR Research had with him:

BR-Research: Tell us about your organization and its journey from Landmark Investment to Tresemark Investment.

Faisal Mamsa: Tresmark is a financial tech firm where we provide services of financial markets. We serve as a data partner for our clients and provide insightful and actionable intelligence which is based on technical analysis and cloud computation that help them take crucial investment decisions. We began our journey as Landmark Investment in 2010 and in 2017; we launched our first tech venture in the form of Tresmark. As of 2023, we have the largest market share in Pakistan in this space as we continue to grow exponentially

BR- Research: What is the differentiating factor that provides Tresmark an edge over the rest of the players in the market?

Faisal Mamsa: Our biggest USP is that we provide over-the-counter (OTC) rates and ensure transparency in the transactions between two counterparties. Besides, we are multi-asset and provide OTC rates for most major markets and asset classes including equities, currencies, money markets, commodities, capital markets etc. We have multiple tools to assist our clients’ trading. These include technical analyses, news, alerts, historic trends, macro-economic data and calculators. We call ourselves a one-stop solution to all treasury and portfolio needs of our clients. Then we have Tresmark Talk, an instant messaging service which allows secure dealing between banks, brokers and other clients.

BR-Research: What are Tresmark’s future expansion plans?

Faisal Mamsa: We have great plans for expansion across the geographical markets as well as product categories. In terms of geographical diversification, GCC is our prime potential market. The challenge that we might face there is that their financial landscape is not very sophisticated, their bond market is in initial stage and most of their currencies are pegged. However, on the positive front, their user-base is expanding at a very fast pace. In terms of product innovation, a lot of ideas are in the pipeline that could help our clients increase their win ratio in terms of trade. Besides, we plan to include the OTC rate of some new specialized chemicals and other commodities on our terminal to create more value to our clients.

BR-Research: How do you define the financial landscape of Pakistan? Has it improved over the years and going forward, how do you foresee it?

Faisal Mamsa: The investment and savings landscape in Pakistan has always been the lowest amongst global peers. It has further eroded over the years because of high inflation which has taken a heavy toll on the purchasing power of the community. More and more people are falling below the poverty line and it is difficult for them to make ends meet, let alone prioritize savings and investments. Besides, there is a lack of financial and technological literacy among masses. A common man is not aware of the investment and savings alternatives on hand, how to trade, and what the potential risks and benefits are. This keeps the potential investors at bay and they would rather invest their money via informal channels than structured and formal avenues. Hence, creating awareness will go a long way in expanding the financial landscape. Furthermore, it will also play a great role in formalizing the economy and bringing in more people within banking system, hence curbing the menace of grey economy.

BR-Research: Stock market has touched its record high recently, after almost 7 years. How would you compare this high with the highs that we last saw in 2017?

Faisal Mamsa: The recent high should not be compared with the one we witnessed in 2017 because KSE-100 is a total return index inclusive of dividends and bonuses. If we look at price to earnings ratio, they are still very low and demonstrate lots of promise for more growth. A lot of companies have done buy-backs off-late which has shrunken their floating component so there is more money chasing that lesser inventory. One way to compare the performance of stock exchange in 2023 and 2017 is to look at KSE-30 index as it is a price only index and doesn’t include dividends. KSE-30 is more than 30 percent down now versus in 2017. There is a lot of room for the exchange to improve its performance. This could probably be done by incentivizing the companies to list on the exchange and by including more investment options. However, the fragile macroeconomic fundamentals are impeding the companies to undertake major investments, which is another major reason why the performance of exchange is relatively muted when compared to those in the region.

BR-Research: the recent crackdown on the currency market, hoarding, smuggling etc has yielded upbeat results and Pak Rupee has appreciated for quite a few sessions. Do you think such administrative measures are sustainable enough for strengthening the currency in the long-run?

Faisal Mamsa: The crackdown was surely required as having stability in the currency is of utmost importance to any country. Pakistan has seen two huge rounds of currency depreciation from Rs.110-180 and from Rs.180 to over 300. This drastically deteriorated the confidence of foreign and local investors. However, as we saw the currency strengthening, a lot of exporters started selling in forward. Around USD 2 billion were sold in the forward tenors especially in the short to medium term. The forwards that were already sold would be missing from the ready markets normal monthly inflows and with pressure building on account of overdue dividend payments, Dollar liquidity in the currency market has become increasingly thin. Consequently, we saw Pak Rupee depreciating yet again against the greenback. Dividends payments were around US$200mn in October. Analysts suggest that the authorities should discourage currency volatility and let it consolidate in the 280-290 range. At the levels, REER index is also at par & should be acceptable to all stakeholders.

BR-Research: What other measures could be implemented to bring more stability in the value of local currency?

Faisal Mamsa: There are a lot of dollars being leaked across borders as many imports were funneled through Afghan transit mechanism. To curb such slippages, administrative measures are fruitful given they are implemented with longevity and seriousness so that the positive results obtained don’t reverse. Besides that, local currency is also suffering because crucial reforms are being delayed. We have enormous fiscal deficit, we are high in term of currency in circulation, inflation, negative real interest rates, we are in the bottom 10 countries in terms of export-to-GDP ratio. If we look at our export growth over the last 20 years, it has been extremely low. Our exports for the recent year stood at around USD 32 billion compared to Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, all having exports of over USD 200 billion. About 20 years back, all these countries were almost neck to neck. So, there needs to be a widespread overhaul of the entire economic system in order to bring stability to Pak Rupee. That would take time and warrant sound policies, political stability and good governance.

BR-Research: as you said that Pakistan’s standing in terms of exports is quite low when compared to other regional counterparts, how can we promote industrial growth given exorbitantly high borrowing rates and the fact that the banking system mostly shies away from lending to private sector?

Faisal Mamsa: It’s not just that the private sector is not borrowing enough because of high discount rate. We have seen borrowing rates as low as 8 percent too and the situation was no different back then. If we compare Pakistan to Turkey, the latter has a discount rate of 40 percent but still having a very vibrant economy. Banks in Pakistan mostly target risk-free investment avenues such as T-bills, PIBs and sukuk. In private sector, they target corporate giants because of low risk involved. The banks would like to lend to small businesses at a premium given the legal infrastructure is reliable.

BR-Research: According to you what role did IMF play in bringing about stability in the financial system of Pakistan?

Faisal Mamsa: IMF has been very unpredictable. It has its quantitative measures while lending; however, sometimes it doesn’t follow them, case in point being the last stand-by agreement that Pakistan entered when everyone was expecting it the least.IMF prerequisites are a bitter pill to swallow, however, they did play a role in putting Pakistan economy back on track by curbing inefficiencies from the energy distribution system, eliminating pointless subsidies, improving tax collection, gas price adjustments etc.

BR-Research: How would you compare Pakistan with other borrowers of IMF? How well or unwell is Pakistan when compared to them?

Faisal Mamsa: The question of going to IMF is not resource-oriented, rather governance-oriented. If we talk about Venezuela, it has the largest known reserves of oil which technically implies that it should be the richest country but it is still in a mess with hyperinflation and a sizeable portion of its population living under the poverty line – all because of poor governance. So, it doesn’t matter, how resource-rich or poor or big or small the other IMF borrowers are, one thing remains common among them and that is the lack of governance. There is very little that IMF can do then.

BR-Research: How would the ongoing geopolitical tension in the Middle East affect the global supply chain and impact Pakistan in specific?

Faisal Mamsa: If the war prolongs, it will definitely put pressure on the global prices of commodities particularly oil which could also create bottlenecks in supply chain and drive up freight rates. This could bring about another round of inflation for Pakistan as we can’t isolate ourselves from the global contagion.