IslamicFinance.de

Consumer banking will continue to be an important revenue generator for banks with home loans being one of the major areas of focus amid the prevailing relatively low interest rates. Apart from home loans, the other sectors in consumer banking which banks are focusing on to beef up their revenue streams are car loans, credit cards, personal loans and wealth management. RAM Ratings head of financial institution ratings Promod Dass said the relatively low interest rate environment had fuelled consumer lending, which represented more than half of the banking system’s loans. Malaysian Rating Corp Bhd vice-president and head of financial institution ratings Anandakumar Jegarasasingam said the main challenge for banks would be to ensure the asset quality of household loans. Ernst & Young Malaysia partner (Assurance) Chan Hooi Lam foresee consumer banking facilities like car loans, purchase of residential properties and credit cards to continue its growth momentum into next year. RHB Banking group director of retail banking Renzo Viegas said that apart from credit cards, the focus would also be in debit cards as the bank saw tremendous growth potential in this area.

Saudi Arabia's parliament delays the decision concerning the mortgage law until the members return from summer recess. Saudi Arabia, the Middle East's biggest economy, needs 1.2 million new homes by 2015, says the Deutsche Bank research.

Aayan Saudi Leasing launched its business in Saudi Arabia with the opening of its headquarters on Madinah Road, Jeddah.

Engineer Emad Rajab asserted that the company's operations in the Saudi market comes as a continuation of its long success which started 10 years ago in Kuwait. Aayan is one of the largest companies working in the field of operating lease and retail in Kuwait, noting that the company aspires to achieve a similar performance in the Saudi market and the GCC, as well.

The company also provides comprehensive insurance services, towing services, excellent warranty service, trading and selling of new and second hand cars.

Kuwait Finance House (Malaysia) Bhd (KFHMB) aims to sell 50kg of gold under its newly-launched KFH Gold Account - i by year-end, says its Retail and Consumer Banking Head Attar Salleh. Since the soft launch of the account two-and-a-half-month ago, the bank had received more than RM1.08 million and transacted nine kilogrammes of gold.

The KFH Gold Account-i, is the first Shariah-based gold account offered in Malaysia where KFHMB sells physical gold to the customer. Through the account, customers are able to purchase and invest in gold in a convenient and secure way. Customers have a choice to either collect the gold or keep it with the bank for safe custody at no charge. Withdrawal of gold can be made in denominations of one, five, 10 and 50 grams

Attar also said customers can start investing from as low as 10 grams of gold and must maintain a minimum balance of two grams. He said the gold price is about RM125 per gram.

Press Release

Today sees the launch of a new Journal on Islamic finance from dedicated Islamic finance media entity Yasaar Media.

The Journal, called So Far – the Journal of Strategic Thinking in Islamic Finance, is written and edited by members of an Islamic finance Think Tank and is modelled on traditional academic journals. The difference with So Far is that the members of the Think Tank are predominantly practitioners rather than academics.
Member of the Think Tank are drawn from the ranks of committed Islamic finance professionals around the world and range from the Gulf and the Far East to the USA and Europe.

Each issue of So Far is dedicated to a single topic of core importance to the Islamic finance industry – and the launch issue looks at the thorny issue of the problems facing the Sukuk market. Unlike many other journals So Far is distributed free in PDF format and is available from a variety of sources including Yasaar Media thus guaranteeing maximum readership and exposure.

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The Financial Times produced a special looking into the Future of Islamic Finance.

The download is free of charge.

Yasaar media published a new report called Islamic Finance in North America 2009 for free download, which is co-published by Codexa Capital, UM Financial Group, King & Spalding, and Doha Islamic.

According to the report Islamic finance in North America has developed along two quite separate paths:

• The first path focuses on retail Islamic finance and centres mostly on home financing products and credit cards.

• The second path involves a number of high profile GCC-based Islamic investment banks and their deployment of hundreds of millions of dollars in private equity and real estate developments in North America.

Read the full report for free at the link below.