Could you provide a brief journey of how you arrived where you are today?
I began my career in Islamic finance in the mid 1980’s. At the time I was employed by Kleinwort Benson, a British merchant bank. I was with Kleinwort until 1998, ultimately as director and head of the Middle Eastern and Islamic institutional business. I moved to establish DDCAP in 1998 and have been with the firm ever since.
What does your role involve?
I am responsible for the strategic development of the DDCAP network in both the UK and overseas. I have also been involved in various external industry initiatives. These include representing DDCAP on the market and product development committee of the International Islamic Financial Market and serving as a member of the Islamic Financial Services Board task force on markets and instruments for Shariah compliant liquidity management as well as being a member of HM Treasury Islamic Finance Experts Group in the UK.
What is your greatest achievement to date?
My greatest professional achievement is having built the excellent team of people operating across our various businesses at DDCAP. Although DDCAP and its directors have been fortunate to receive a number of industry accolades in recent years, we were delighted to be awarded “Best Interbroker for Islamic Transactions” from Islamic Finance news this year, especially as the vote was from our industry peers.
Which of your products / services deliver the best results?
DDCAP functions as an intermediary in the Islamic financial marketplace. Our clients include Islamic institutions and conventional banks active in the industry. We enjoy a strong reputation for our “brokerage” services although we are not a broker in the conventional sense, as Shariah stipulation requires our firm to act as principal in many transactional situations. Many of our clients also seek our services to support the structuring and delivery of products and transactions in wholesale banking, capital markets and asset management.
What are the strengths of your business?
Our sustained, long term market presence, and the depth and diversity of the skill sets of our people. Our directors have worked specifically within the Islamic financial sector for nearly three decades and this is complemented and supported by a wealth of expertise from colleagues with experience across the financial world. We are not solely a broker, fund manager or advisory house but combine our abilities across these disciplines in an endeavor to provide a tailored service to clients from the Islamic financial market.
What are the factors contributing to the success of your company?
Undoubtedly, personnel, clients and shareholders. Some clients have had active transactional relationships with us for 25 years. This gives us a genuine long term appreciation of the market, its trends, developments and requirements. We are most fortunate to benefit from the insight and support of our shareholders. For example our majority shareholder, IPGL, is vastly experienced in our core interbank and capital markets space and also in growing market leading businesses such as ICAP.
What are the obstacles faced in running your business today?
For every firm operating in the global financial system, markets remain challenging and still uncertain. Although DDCAP does not have the same proprietary risk exposure considerations of its client banks, we have needed to be continually positioned to adapt our services to ongoing changes in the requirements of both clients and individual jurisdictions in the wake of the crisis.
Where do you see the Islamic finance industry in, say, the next five years or so?
Although the principles that underpin the Islamic financial sector have enabled it to enjoy some natural protection from asset based risks that adversely impacted the conventional space, our system has not been immune from the impact of the crisis. Lack of sufficiently diversified asset classes has long caused excessive concentration risk but other fundamental flaws, such as the absence of a liquid market infrastructure and instruments for management of liquidity risk introduced additional stress.
The International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation will provide added support for the regulatory focused initiatives of the central banking authorities involved. Otherwise, post crisis statistics suggest a significant reduction in the growth of mature, international markets for the coming five years when compared to recent historical trends.
Conversely, growth projections for emerging economies in Asia, the Middle East and Africa exceed the level of actual growth during the past 10 years. As these economies include a number of the existing, core Islamic financial markets as well as some exciting emerging jurisdictions we consider that prospects for industry growth are encouraging.
Name one thing you would like to see change in the world of Islamic finance.
I would like to think that our platform for debate is being continually elevated and that both the practitioner and academic dialogue will remain focused on the enhancement of a wider industry architecture rather than being derailed, for protracted periods, by narrow discussion focused on peripheral matters that have perhaps less relevance to our sustained core stability and future growth.