London based property investment platform Yielders is looking to ramp up growth across Asia, Europe and the Middle East after receiving 'Sharia compliant' status.
Yielders offers the opportunity for the public to invest as little as £100 towards buying a share of a crowdfunded property that is now compliant with religious rules.
Islamic law and tradition (Sharia) has complex rules on money, investment and interest on assets and so for some Muslims financial products such as fixed income and the regular bond market – as well as p2p and marketplace lending - are avoided.
In recent years, this has given rise to a $300bn market for ‘Sukuk’ bonds which through their specialist structure and blessing from religious officials are considered to be compliant. Now, with the growth of fintech around the world, several new players are seeking to disrupt this fast-growing market.
Yielders is one such player and claims to be the first in the UK to have received sharia certification. The firm says this was conducted by Islamic Finance Council and overseen by a prominent scholar.
Irfan Khan, Yielders’ founder, says the platform “levels the playing field” for investors in Islamic finance and provides a monthly income by only offering pre-funded investments to the retail crowd, meaning the assets are already generating an income.
Tarek El Diwany, an expert in Islamic Finance and author of ‘The Problem With Interest’ says, the development of a widely available equity-based financing model for property has been a “prized objective of Islamic financial professionals for at least three decades.”
“In recent years, developments in communications technology and financial innovation have made this objective more attainable, by lowering barriers to entry and making the process of origination and fund aggregation more cost efficient. All of this makes it a very exciting time to be involved in the fintech field, in the real estate sector and beyond.”
