Mohamed Donia has many years of experience delivering solutions in the financial services marketplace. Previously Mohamed was the vice-president of TenFold Corporation in San Francisco, where he was responsible for defining and delivering solutions for Fortune 500 customers. He started his career at Proctor and Gamble.
Could you provide a brief journey of how you arrived where you are today?
After many years of working in the Silicon Valley and co founding start-up companies, I had the opportunity to serve the financial services industry in the US and witnessed how technology helped grow the sector. In 2006 while I was engaged in a hedge fund service start-up that grew to serve some of the world most successful hedge funds, I became aware of Islamic finance with an interest in understanding how to make my personal investments Shariah compliant.
While investigating how to manage my portfolio and make it Shariah compliant, I faced many problems and realized there were no services out there in the market to help investors to solve such complex problems. Since some people may call me a serial entrepreneur, I thought I should focus my efforts to solve a complex problem in the industry to easily indentify if a company is suitable for investment for Shariah compliant investors at little or no cost.
At that point IdealRatings was born and after only six years, the company services are now used by some of the largest banks and institutions in the industry and have a customer base in around 15 countries globally.
What does your role involve?
The most important three things I always focus on are: a) Customer satisfaction: I spend a lot of time with my customers to understand what they need and how can I develop or enhance my products to help them; b) Innovation: A good product does not need a sales force or marketing. I always focus on innovations and every year, together with my team we draw roadmaps of shifts in the industry and analyze how we can add more value to our customers through innovation; 3) Talent acquisitions and keeping close to my team. I try my best to hire the best and also to understand the career inspiration of every employee in the company and think of plans for how to develop them to help them succeed.
What is your greatest achievement to date?
My team and I are proud to have set a standard in the industry for Shariah compliant fund management and have helped investors’ worldwide to count on us to provide such critical information.
Which of your products/services deliver the best results?
Our equities product and soon our Sukuk product are delivering fantastic results. We enjoy serving a significant customer base.
What are the strengths of your business?
We serve a large, completely underserved market, so our growth has been tremendous year-on-year.
What are the factors contributing to the success of your company?
Mainly a highly capable team, innovative products and raising the bar internally to always focus on having happy customers.
What are the obstacles faced in running your business today?
It is important for us to keep focusing on our company culture and values. As we grow we hire a lot of people and it is very important for us to invest in boot camp training to ensure all our employees are aware of our mission, values and have the expertise to work in the industry.
Where do you see the Islamic finance industry in the next five years?
I believe the industry will significantly change in the next five years and will merge with other significant development like socially responsible investments (SRI), green invesstments, ESG, Christian values-based investments, etc. All of the above will be combined under one title: ‘do good on earth’. This will become valuable for people from different religions because following such guidelines in investments is likely to provide the best risk-return result.
Name one thing you would like to see change in the world of Islamic finance.
I would like to see the industry focusing more on developing innovative compliant structures instead of ‘mimicking’ conventional products.