Could you provide a brief journey of how you arrived where you are today?
After spending 15 years with several global custodian banks in Toronto, Boston and London, I joined SWIFT in 2000. The appeal was to work for a firm that had an overview of the entire financial industry. Working in business development led me to explore Islamic finance and what SWIFT could do in this area. After initiating SWIFT’s first footsteps in this area, I have now been leading SWIFT’s efforts in Islamic finance since 2009.
What does your role involve?
A significant part of my role involves building a solid relationship between SWIFT and the Islamic financial community. We have more than 240 Islamic banks on SWIFT. By working with my colleagues in our Asian, Middle East and London offices, we are building a better understanding of what our Islamic customers need from SWIFT.
I also work with industry groups such as AAOIFI, IIFM and Association of Islamic Banking Institutions Malaysia (AIBIM). Finally, my role includes the coordination of internal resources to ensure SWIFT meets the standardization and automation needs of our customers in a Shariah compliant manner.
What is your greatest achievement to date?
SWIFT’s first steps in Islamic finance focused on Treasury Murabahah. In collaboration with the market we worked to standardize and automate the schedules exchanged in Murabahah. We spent more than a year reviewing sample schedules provided by our customers and IIFM, and mapping the relevant data to ISO 15022 messages carried over SWIFT. This resulted in SWIFT’s Murabahah solution being successfully tested and launched in 2010. In October 2010 AAOIFI certified these messages as compliant with international Islamic finance standards.
Which of your products / services deliver the best results?
SWIFT’s message standards provide immediate results to our customers. By implementing an electronic message standard over SWIFT you are able to automate your transaction processing and communication with your counterparties. You can exchange transaction related information with all of your counterparties in a single standardized format, through a single highly secure SWIFT connection. Operational costs and risks are dramatically reduced. This allows you to concentrate on building your business, creating new products, and serving your own customers.
What are the strengths of your business?
One of the key strengths of SWIFT is our community. SWIFT was founded in 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries. Today we operate in 210 countries with more than 9,600 users (including banks, brokers, investment managers, exchanges, corporates and securities depositories), who exchange an average of 16 million messages every day.
The greater the number of counterparties you communicate with via SWIFT, the more you realize the benefits and value in terms of cost and risk reduction. The global reach of SWIFT enables you to communicate with counterparties across town or across the globe in the same way.
What are the factors contributing to the success of your company?
A key success factor for SWIFT is our role as a neutral third party. We act as the catalyst that brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and consider solutions to issues of mutual interest. A good example of this is our Murabahah solution. This was created in collaboration with our customers and Islamic finance organisations in different parts of the world.
What are the obstacles faced in running your business today?
Whereas the SWIFT community is one of our greatest strengths, it can also be challenging trying to prioritize its disparate needs. There is continued demand on SWIFT to create new products and services, and we must ensure that we meet the greatest needs of the community. Therefore prioritization is crucial.
Where do you see the Islamic finance industry in, say, the next five years or so?
I see it being a much bigger part of the global financial industry. Today Islamic finance is one of the fastest growing areas of the financial industry, fuelling demand for Shariah compliant financial products. This is compounded by the fact that non-Muslims are increasingly looking to Islamic finance as a viable alternative to conventional finance.
To safely accommodate this growth, I also see Islamic financial organizations becoming increasingly standardized and automated. This is where SWIFT will play an important role.
Name one thing you would like to see change in the world of Islamic finance.
I would like to see global Islamic finance regulation. If all Islamic financial institutions are working under the same rules and regulations, the market would be simplified, and a greater degree of trust would be attained. This could only be positive for Islamic financial practitioners and customers alike.