Hejaz Financial Services is launching 3 new Islamic funds with first fully-fledged Islamic bank in 12 months.
Our COO, Muzzammil Dhedhy, spoke to Nessereen Tamano from Islamic Finance News on the current status of Islamic finance and banking in Australia.
Listen to the podcast here.
Or learn more about Hejaz’s range of premier Islamic Financial Services here.
Our CEO, Hakan Ozyon, explores the current dilemma facing the adviser industry, reverting back to past mistakes or building a client-centric model.
Hakan also shares his thoughts on Islamic finance in Australia, the under-banked community and how advisers can not only survive but thrive in this market.
Read the article here.
Or learn more about our range of premier Islamic financial services designed specially for you here.
Our CEO, Hakan Ozyon, shares his thoughts on making the financial advice industry sustainable. There will always be a need for sound financial advice.
The question is how can the sector adapt to strike the right balance between quality and affordability?
Read the article: https://www.fsadvice.com.au/blogs/view/making-the-financial-advice-industry-sustainable-179774097?q=hejaz
Learn more about our range of premier Islamic financial services: https://www.hejazfs.com.au/
Our mission has always been to help the Australian Muslims gain better access to wealth creation in line with their faith and values.
With a banking license, this would open up more opportunities for the community to access a holistic range of financial products and services without compromising on quality and performance.
Thank you Aleks Vickovich and The Australian Financial Review for the chat and write up.
Read the article: https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/wealth-firm-eyes-250b-islamic-finance-market-gap-20210514-p57s3a
Learn more about Hejaz Financial Services Islamic products: https://www.hejazfs.com.au/
Thank you AdviserVoice for the feature.
We have launched Australia’s first Islamic advice network through our very own AFSL Dealer Group, Hejaz Financial Advisers.
With this, we aim to assist Muslim clients with growing their wealth in a Sharia-compliant way.
Read the Article: https://www.adviservoice.com.au/2021/05/hejaz-launches-australias-first-islamic-specialist-financial-adviser-network/?utm_source=adviservoice&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=Adviser%20Dealer%20group
Learn more about Hejaz Financial Services Islamic products: https://www.hejazfs.com.au/
A new Sydney dealer group focused on Muslim clients is looking to hire up to 50 financial advisers in the next 12 months, as it nabs MSC Group’s chief operating officer to lead the business.
The full article was published in Financial Standard on 5th May 2021, written by Kanika Sood, and is republished with permission. Click here to view the original article.
Hakan Ozyon is struggling to remember the name of Sheikh Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, the economist who chairs the Dubai-based Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI).
“Sorry, I’m fasting at the moment and haven’t had any coffee,” he says.
Ten more days remain until Ramadan ends and Muslims can celebrate eating and drinking between dawn and dusk again. “You know how people get drunk on beer? We get drunk on sweets,” he jokes.
Ozyon, the chief executive at Melbourne-based Hejaz financial services, has more to look forward to than sugar. After the success of his firm’s Islamic investing services over the past few years, Hejaz has set up its own AFSL and is looking to roll out a financial planning offering to the Australia’s growing Muslim community.
“200 advisers is our aim,” Ozyon tells Professional Planner. “The Muslim community is not small.”
While Census figures put the number of Australian Muslims at about 650,000, Ozyon says the figure is much higher. “We know a lot of Muslims aren’t listed,” he says, “There’d be over a million.”
The Muslim financial advice market is a largely underserviced one. While there are small advice firms offering Islamic advice services, none do so at scale. Muslims are often – mistakenly or otherwise – put into non-compliant investments or resort to accepting non-Islamic investment advice. Many avoid financial advice entirely.
Ozyon says it’s “disturbing” how many advisers provide non-Islamic advice to unwitting Muslim clients. “Presenting products as Islamic that aren’t in order to make money off it is quite sad,” he says.
Finer details
Sitting in his Melbourne office, Ozyon explains some of the nuances of Islamic (otherwise known as ‘sharia compliant’) finance.
In accordance with the Islamic law, Muslims are only permitted to raise capital in certain ways. Central principals are the avoidance of usury (‘riba’) and ambiguity or deception (‘gharar’), meaning interest payments and traditional insurance products are forbidden (‘haram’).
From there, the detail gets finer. According to the rules set out by the AAIOFI – which acts as a global governing body for Islamic finance – investing in leveraged companies is permissible, as long as the debt to asset ratio is less than 33 per cent.
Much like other forms of socially responsible investing, sharia compliant (‘halal’) investing also excludes investing in alcohol, weapons and drugs, but with a five per cent tolerance.
“It’s not as simple saying we can’t deal in certain activities, it’s a lot more complex than that,” Ozyon explains.
Despite dating back to the seventh century, Islamic finance lost prominence in the new world order of finance before burgeoning oil profits in the Middle East contributed to the AAIOFI’s formation and its subsequent re-emergence.
According to the Islamic Development Bank global Islamic finance assets totalled USD $2.88 trillion in 2019 and are forecast to reach USD $3.69 trillion by 2024.
Ready to ramp up
Hejaz Financial Services has historically offered Islamic accounting, law and investment services, with just a small clutch of in-demand financial advisers.
Over time, Ozyon realised the firm’s advice arm was not strong enough to serve demand.
“We felt like we weren’t getting into the community fast enough,” he says. “We’ve had about five sharia compliant advisers for years now, operating under the Inteprac AFSL, but what we now want is to extend our reach with more advisers and bring them up under a new AFSL as sharia.”
Incoming advisers will be trained on sharia advice internally, he says, and don’t need to be Muslim themselves. “We actually have a lot more non-Muslim staff than Muslim staff.”
Apart from the investments, he says, the advice experience varies little from that of a generic adviser. “It hasn’t got much of a different feel, the interface is very similar to other advisers,” he adds.
Ozyon has just hired ex-Capstone and AMP executive Susan Wolff to head up the new Hejaz Financial Advisers dealer group. Wolff calls the Muslim market potential “enormous”.
“Muslim Australians are diligent savers and, given the choice, will always gravitate to financial products that align with their faith and values,” she says.
Ozyon wants 50 advisers by the end of 2021 and up to 200 eventually, which would – as it stands – put the group just inside the nation’s top 20 licensee owners by adviser numbers. For comparison, the $240 billion FUM Shaw & Partners has exactly 200 advisers according to the latest figures from ASIC.
It won’t be easy, especially given the current shrinking adviser cohort. But Ozyon believes the community is behind him and the market for Islamic advice stretches beyond the Muslim world.
“Five percent of my clients are non-Muslim,” he says. “They just like what we offer.”
This article was first published in Professional Planner on 4th May 2021, written by Tahn Sharpe, and is republished with permission. Click here to view the original article.
In a statement, Hejaz Financial Services said it was launching the Hejaz Financial Advisers Network to assist Muslim clients with growing their wealth in a Sharia-compliant way.
Traditional Islamic beliefs forbid the use of financial products that pay or receive interest, as well as a number of other ethical screens including alcohol and non-Halal food products.
“Muslims are a growing but underserved financial services market in Australia,” Hejaz chief executive Hakan Ozyon said.
“To date, they have not been able to access specialist advice or products designed to help them achieve their financial goals in a way that reflects their religious faith.
“By establishing a network of advisers who deeply understand the customers they serve, Hejaz is helping to make wealth management more accessible to Islamic communities.
“We believe we are also setting an example at a time when questions have been raised about how aligned advisers are to their clients’ needs.”
The group said it would initially look to recruit around 50 advisers – from Islamic and non-Islamic backgrounds – to the network within the first 12 months, with plans to ultimately grow to between 150 and 200 authorised representatives.
To lead the development of the network, Hejaz had recruited former AMP governance manager Susan Wolff as its new general manager of wealth management.
Ms Wolff was most recently chief operating officer for trustee company MSC Group.
“Hejaz is taking steps to make wealth creation more customer-centric. The market potential here is enormous – Muslim Australians are diligent savers and, given the choice, will always gravitate to financial products that align with their faith and values,” Ms Wolff said.
“I am pleased to be joining Hakan and the leadership team as Hejaz continues to create innovative new funds and solutions to everyday problems. A laser focus on what our Muslim and non-Muslim customers are actually looking for is exactly what the industry needs.”
This article was first published in Independent Financial Adviser on 4th May 2021, written by Sarah Kendell, and is republished with permission. Click here to view the original article
The Australian government and the reserve bank of Australia took various initiatives to protect the local economy from the adverse impacts of COVID-19. These included and unprecedented quantitative easing program, three interest rate reductions over the course of 2020 to a record low of 0.1% and a government-subsidized wage scheme to keep people in jobs, while home loan borrowers could defer loan repayments to reduce mortgage stress and defaults, while boosting credit activities.
These initiatives have had a positive impact across the broader Australian economy, with some sectors being an exceptions such as hospitality and tourism, while the Islamic financial services industry has also been supported by government initiatives.
In terms of the local Islamic financial services industry, the more established Islamic financial services providers have reported exponential growth in client numbers, investment volumes and home loan enquiries. This is despite government regulations allowing access to pension funds to assist in the recovery of the pandemic.
In the investment space, Islamic investments have performed better than their conventional equivalents due to the diversified nature of the underlying portfolio, with limited exposure to leveraged investments and no exposure to speculative instruments such as derivatives. This has allowed Islamic investors to enjoy healthy gains in their investment portfolios for the 2021 financial year thus far and the signs look positive for further growth in the remainder of the financial year.
As for the Islamic home finance market, it has grown exponentially in the 2021 financial year. Muslim borrowers have proven to be very resilient, reporting only one case of financial hardship during the peak of COVID-19 in 2020. Moreover, lower finance rates have created what many are calling a ‘once in generation’ property boom with many Muslims engaging with Islamic financiers to enter the property market for the first time, while other more seasoned investors are growing their portfolios. Muslim enquiries for Islamic financing increased over 200% over the second half of 2020, with the momentum continuing into 2021.
Considering this growth in demand for Islamic home finance products, Hejaz Group launched a pioneering partnership with one of Australia’s mortgage aggregators, Finsure. This will allow, for the first time in Australia, Islamic home finance products to be offered to clients through a broker channel.
Islamic home finance primarily provides an avenue for younger Australian Muslims seeking to enter the housing market through financial products that align with their religious values. Increasingly, we are seeing Muslim Australians – particularly younger generations – seeking financial products and models that align with their faith, while still helping them reach their financial goals, be it homeownership or wealth creation.
Considering the best interest duty obligations that came into effect on the 1st January 2021, it is more important than ever to clearly demonstrate why a loan product is recommended is in face in a client’s best interests.
Through the partnership between Hejaz Group and Finsure, when a client of Islamic faith approaches a broker seeking an Islamic loan, brokers will be able to look beyond conventional loan products and offer a product that aligns with not only that client’s best interests, but their personal values.
As a further confirmation of the robustness and health of the Australian economy post-COVID-19, the Australian dollar (AUD) rose 10% against the greenback during 2020 to hit a two-year high of 77 US cents on the 31st December amid a broad weakening of the US dollar, while making smaller gains against the pound (up 4.8%) and the Japanese yen (3.1%).
2021 has seen the further strengthening of the AUD, on the back of higher commodity prices, further strengthening the rebound in the resource-rich Australian economy. Hence, the IMF has a forecast growth of 4.5% for 2021.
Hakan Ozyon is CEO of Hejaz Group of Companies. He can be contacted at [email protected]