Muslim Money Talk
Introducing the Muslim Money Talk Podcast, a place for all things Muslim and Money related.
Every week we'll be sitting down with Founders, leaders and industry experts from across multiple disciplines to discuss lessons learned, mistakes made and most importantly 'How they did it?'.
Brought to you by Kestrl: The Muslim Money App, software to help Muslims grow their wealth without compromise. Find out more here: https://kestrl.io/
Muslim Money Talk
Muslims & Money: Why We Struggle to Build Wealth (and How to Fix It) | Ep 55 Ahmad and Adel (Nisba)
This episode explores the challenges Muslims in the UK face around wealth creation, from limited savings to a lack of financial literacy. Guests Ahmad Ayoubi and Adel Bereksi-Reguig, co-founders of Nisba, share their personal journeys and vision for empowering Muslims with halal investment education and tools.
This podcast is hosted by Areeb Siddiqui, the founder and CEO of Kestrl, the app that helps people to grow their wealth without compromise
Find out more about our app here: https://kestrl.io/
And how we help banks here: https://business.kestrl.io/
Show Notes:
00:00 - Opening
01:36 – Meet the founders of Nisba
03:42 – Career journeys: trading, teaching & consulting
09:41 – Reconnecting through faith and charity
13:27 – Founding Nisba: from idea to platform
20:09 – Leaving conventional finance for halal alternatives
25:35 – The mission: education, tools & coaching
35:20 – Biggest financial challenges facing UK Muslims
43:06 – Who should own Islamic banks?
49:25 – Challenges in halal investing & boycotts
56:09 – Practical advice for young Muslims with savings
1:07:31 – Final thoughts
What do you think are the number one problems for Muslims?
Speaker 2:in the UK. Most people don't know, but there's like 5 million people in the UK that have less than £100 savings. Wow, 34% of the UK adults have less than £1,000. So people have barely even saved any money. We've pinpointed the problem. The problem is wealth creation. So you know how to make money, but do you know how to grow it?
Speaker 3:And they saw the risk profiles conservative to aggressive, they thought make money, but do you know how to grow it? And they saw the risk profiles conservative to aggressive, they thought I'm not aggressive person.
Speaker 1:and when they saw conservative, they thought I don't support the conservative party, but now to actually change your entire source of income, something that is purely halal. It's really commendable.
Speaker 3:I didn't change my income.
Speaker 2:I went from income to no income we are an education platform at the at present, we try and try and educate Muslims how to invest your money, if you are one of those people that is able to save and not spend more than you save.
Speaker 1:You should be putting it to work Before we begin. We notice only about 20% of you are subscribed to the podcast, so if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us, then please consider subscribing, liking, sharing or leaving us a comment or a review wherever you are listening to this, because it really does help people to find us. Thank you, and back to the show. In today's episode, I'm joined by the co-founders of Nisba, a platform that empowers Muslims to take their financial literacy into their own hands with investment training academies, comparison tools and calculators. I see them as kind of like a halal moneysupermarketcom.
Speaker 1:The two founders, ahmed Ayyubi is a former trader for the likes of Guy Butler and Rabobank, and he's a finance grad from Durham. He's also joined by Adil Bareksi, who is an award-winning former economics teacher and a financial analyst and an IT consultant, and together they've joined forces to create this. So we're going to be talking about the current state of Islamic finance in this country and beyond, what needs to be done, and also some not advice, but maybe some guidance and some tips for what people could do to become more financially literate. As always, I'm your host, areeb Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk, guys. Assalamu alaikum and welcome to Muslim Money Talk.
Speaker 3:Wa alaikum assalam, thank you so much for having us. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1:It's been a long time coming. Been a long time coming, I think I. I think I first saw you guys like everyone else on instagram, where I think you I think you were driving a car, other was there on the passenger seat and you were just like asking each other questions.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that we did that one recently as a new star, but yeah, but it's maybe that's the one that sticks in my head, yeah but it's been, it's been just under two years now, just under two years you guys have been doing this, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, how did you guys first?
Speaker 2:meet. Well, we actually we grew up in the same area outside of london, so we're like family friends. We went to arabic school together, nice but ahmed was a few years older than me, so we weren't really friends. We like knew each other, yeah, but weren't really that close. And this is where he says, oh, I had. It was the annoying younger guy and we weren't friends, but he was annoying I don't make that up.
Speaker 3:He was annoying because justin was was annoying. Yeah, no, he's a very nice guy now, but I think we there was quite a lot of competitive spirit when we used to play football, because we used to play football a lot together and he was you know. You know, sometimes we play football there's a guy who's slightly younger than you, a little bit skinny, goes in a bit hard with the tackles, think they're really good. Adler's that guy. So it was. I don't not in a, not in a mean way, you know you could admit it.
Speaker 2:So if someone's better than you, they're better, it's fine. You don't want to?
Speaker 1:he is a minute you don't, you don't admit when someone okay, so that's how you guys first met, but then you guys went on very different paths. I guess you went off to well. No, you studied similar things.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, actually true, we did. We did study similar things. You studied accounting and finance. I studied accounting as well. Yeah, um, I guess very different career trajectories. I did like a year in finance as a placement year at disney. Oh really, yeah, so they have a corporate head office in hammersmith, I know, yeah, and I did a year industry.
Speaker 1:There was about 14 months and it was really big um sully from monster.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, okay, it was good fun but I just realized you know what I don't want to do this. I don't want to go into this whole finance world. Why was that? It just felt a bit soulless, okay. I just felt like I didn't. I felt like I had a greater purpose, that I wanted to achieve more, and I thought you know what I want to do? Teaching, okay, which was just crazy. And I remember just telling like friends and family they're like what the hell, what a waste. You know what?
Speaker 1:studying like finance and potentially going to do well really you were teaching economics and I I announced you as award winning as a teacher.
Speaker 2:What was the?
Speaker 1:award that you won.
Speaker 2:It was for, like alhamdulillah, like I did have really good results, like I when, because I did a graduate scheme called teach first. Okay, and it was, it was really good, because basically what happens is you go to university, after university, you go into a six weeks intense training course and then on the 1st of September you're a full-time teacher. Wow. So normally you have like a year PGCE, pgce, yeah, whereas we were going in like day one teaching and you do your PGCE basically at night, half term, weekends, all that sort of stuff. So like it was brutal, I was 21 years old teaching 18 year olds and they were like sir, sir, sir, like you want to come to the party on the weekend. I'm like I'm not your friend.
Speaker 1:No, I don't totally. I'll stop for a while, yeah um yeah, it was just.
Speaker 2:It was just crazy, but I really love teaching, so I thought let me have a go, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:and then I I'm going to imagine, given your role as a trader, that you didn't see it as solace, or maybe you did, but the money was good enough that you continued in that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've not. I always say that I never really made any decisions in my life. I wanted to study robotics, but actually I applied to dentistry because my dad said there's no jobs in robotics. He said they're all in Japan. What are you going to do in japan? So I, um, I applied to dentistry. I didn't get any offers and then I applied to robotics. This degree was called robotics and cybernetics, I remember and I got accepted from reading university and then my dad was like no, you're not doing that what is that?
Speaker 2:yeah, what is that?
Speaker 3:what is that degree?
Speaker 2:I don't understand it's not medicine like a job, yeah uh.
Speaker 3:So then I ended up applying to accounting. I don't know why. I hadn't even considered finance as a route. It didn't even pop in my head. Funny, when I was 18 I had no clue. I always think that when I was 18 I didn't have much original thought or I wasn't thinking about much. But anyway, I ended up in durham studying accounting and I thought anyone that studies accounting becomes an accountant. But it wasn't like that. And I um, you know those kids who are slightly gifted not like, not amazing, I'm not like a straight a-star student, but gifted enough to think that, oh, I won't have trouble with anything in life. Um, so I got into durham and I thought I'm going to goldman sachs when I graduate, that's where I'm going to go. And then it wasn't until like the end of the second year where it was like okay time to get your internship and I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa where do I get this internship from?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, and then obviously, I applied to like the big banks and there's straight rejections and I think it was the first time in my life that I started getting rejections yeah, um, very irregularly. And that's when I realized, oh my god, I actually have to try in my life now. Um, it was not easy at the time but then you found yourself in investment banking.
Speaker 1:Eventually was it robobank.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I actually applied to do a master's and I got accepted into a master's and I paid the non-refundable deposit and then I got the job offer. But my thinking is that university is to get a job and I had a job offer, so I got rid of the um non-refundable deposit and I just went into rabid bank it's kind of similar.
Speaker 1:I related so much when you said I feel like no decision. I never made a decision in my life because it was um. I went to do a degree in physics because I actually wanted to do zoology but my dad was like you need to be working in financial services and there was like a clear route from some of the London universities, if you do straight sciences, into banking, investment banking and consulting. So I did physics at UCL and then everyone started applying for internships the second year I was like, okay, let me start doing that.
Speaker 1:and my friend was like, yeah, there's Deloitte's got summer internships, just apply. So I went along, did that, got the internship, got the job, and then it was just going on like that, but I never felt like I made a real decision, to be honest, until it came to my entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 2:So you never had a job. Right after university you went straight into your master's and then no, no, so that's it.
Speaker 1:I had masters and then no, no, so so that's it. I had a non-refundable deposit on a masters at ucl which I ditched because I was like, well, I've got a job, because I went to deloitte and I did my grad scheme there for three years, um, so I was a consultant for big banks, big banks and wealth managers, helping them to develop their own fintech rollout plan. So this was like at the time of nutmeg, when they were coming out. So I got to work on that and, um, when credit suites were creating their own and you know, there were a bunch of all these robo advisors coming out at the time, um, and then I kind of got tired of working in that industry.
Speaker 1:It's like very I don't want to say un-islamic, but it's also very like haram adjacent in that. You know, there's all. Every social event is very alcohol based. Um, every client dinner, it's all about the alcohol. It's very hard to socialize within those companies. You know, there's all. Every social event is very alcohol based. Um, every client dinner, it's all about the alcohol. It's very hard to socialize within those companies. You know, you know this right and and you must as well within your consulting days um. So I went to do an mba. So I applied um to do mbas, got into cambridge, went there for a year and that's where I came up with kestrel, with my co-founder dying, and that's the story. But yeah, there was a big chunk of work in between I don't know why.
Speaker 2:I was under the impression that you never. Oh, that's how we sell it, so we come out, yeah, but no we have some experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, but no no, no, past that, past that, um okay, but then how did you guys come back together?
Speaker 3:do you want me to tell the story? Have you told this story even though you don't like it I'll tell it in a nice light version a lighter, light version then okay, we we lost touch for about 10, 15 years, uh-huh, if maybe more. Not that, we speak much anyway when we're younger you made it clear that you found yeah just football tournaments, but we were still connected on linkedin, I believe um, and that's when I used to see some of Adler's posts. Who were you?
Speaker 3:posting about. He used to post about charity sometimes. Okay, and I've struggled a lot in my life with religion. I ask too many questions. I'm one of those people. This doesn't make sense to me. What about this? Why do we have to do that? It doesn't make sense to me. So I used to see a lot of people, I used to invite friends over and I used to tell them. I used to tell them all the things that's wrong with Islam. What about this, what about that? If I'm honest and I used to love it, I used to love it Because it's an interesting conversation. I don't like small talk.
Speaker 1:How did people feel when you were doing that? Because?
Speaker 3:I imagine some people got very uncomfortable. No, I'm quite lighthearted, uh, like. One big thing I'd say to someone is like okay, you're following this religion, have you even read the quran? Have you read the quran back to back? That's a big one. There's a big one because lots of people haven't. And if they have, they read it in arabic, in arabic, and they don't speak. They don't, they don't even understand it. But you decided to follow this whole religion, your whole life, and you decided to commit everything to it. You don't even understand it.
Speaker 3:Um, that's a valid question and you still have. You still have opinions about it. But this religion that you don't understand fully, you still decided to commit your whole life to it. But that was just. That was just one of many, many points um, you probably got everyone at home.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, I doubt no, but it's a valid point. It is a valid point, like we should all be reading the quran in a language that you understand. Yes, yeah and reflecting on it and like thinking about it like.
Speaker 3:You know how many surahs are there in the quran, and every so often you hear a surah. Oh, I've never heard the name of that surah before. Yeah, and hadid, what is that one? What's that one? What's that? One about it's true it's crazy, and each one you go into there's a new story, new something, something that you didn't really understand before. But really our understanding just comes down from things that we hear, or maybe different lectures we've been to, without going back to the source, to be honest it's.
Speaker 1:It's instagram is tiktok, it's youtube. That's how most people consume content about their religion and, arguably, islamic finance today. Yeah socials, and they're so ready to share as soon as they watch a 30 second clip, that's it they're ready to share that piece of knowledge if it's good, if you've done a good job as a content creator I guess, yeah, but it's also the danger.
Speaker 3:I guess there is a big danger but anyway, someone said to me your problem, ahmed, your problem is that you have a hard heart. And I always said, yeah, I've got a very hard heart. You know the type of guys that don't cry. I think most of us are I?
Speaker 1:I didn't cry at either of my children's births, so my wife like literally.
Speaker 2:I don't think you would cry that. I don't know. Would you cry at that? I don't know, would you cry at your child's birth?
Speaker 1:You got to put it on a bit, don't you? Yeah, I do. I learned that lesson. And then I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy 3. And there was a scene where Rocket Raccoon is like you think he's dead and a little tear came out.
Speaker 4:My wife's next to me and she's like what the hell is wrong with you, where are your priorities?
Speaker 1:yeah, literally um. Anyway, I get what you mean. Yeah uh.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, hard heart, and they recommended to me that I should do physical, on the ground charity work. Okay, which is nothing, something I've never done before. I don't mind giving charity in terms of money, but doing like real stuff and I thought, okay, that's a good idea. See the impact. Yes, and that's why I reached out to Aden, because on occasion in the past he has done some charity work on the ground and out of all the people on my LinkedIn that I half knew, he was the only one that I thought, okay, let me reach out to this guy. So I texted him. I said, oh hey, let me know when you're going on another trip because I want to come with you. And then that's when he called me and we had an hour conversation or so.
Speaker 4:It was long it was a long call and I found out.
Speaker 3:He lives down the road from me, even though we both live in a completely different area to the one we grew up in.
Speaker 1:Oh really, what a coincidence.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's a big big coincidence, so then we reconnected over that.
Speaker 2:And then connected over that and then we became friends again. We started going to bjj together hated it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not fun at all. Yeah, quit that um. And then, yeah, along the journey, adil told me that I don't need to do this um charity trip. He said I need something else, and he recommended an islamic development program called sabir uh, which I overwhelmingly rejected at the beginning, even though I said to him yeah, yeah, all right, I'll do it. I'll do it because it's a proper thing. You gotta sign up for. You gotta pay a grand, you gotta go to these retreats every year oh yeah yeah it's when your, when your colleagues ask you, oh, where are you going for the weekend?
Speaker 3:oh no, I'm going to training camp.
Speaker 2:Just just seeing the family no, when you try to explain it to them like a non-Muslim, they're like what the hell are you doing?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's like you're going to Syria. Yeah, we do some physical activity.
Speaker 2:There's some deep dive into some real serious subject matters yeah, but it's like it's really good.
Speaker 3:It is really good, it is amazing they take you through the Quran, they take you through Islamic thought, all sorts of stuff. It's a proper like terabiyah program.
Speaker 2:It's a proper terabiyah program, especially like if you've grown up in the West you would have learned a lot of dodgy stuff along the way that you didn't even realize that you knew. So it kind of just helps you unlearn some of that stuff and go back to the roots and understand. You know what is the Quran. Why do people say it's miraculous? Because I used to have a real big issue when I'd go into school, like when I was teaching, and people would ask me questions and I wouldn't know how to answer them.
Speaker 1:They would ask you Islamic questions. Yeah, Islamic questions In economics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but as in just general, like chit-chat break time, lunch time, staff room, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:I had a colleague who's an atheist but loved to debate theology and I debate theology and I could never like retort. I can never come back, and I was. I just felt so ashamed, like as a muslim. I didn't, I didn't have the answers, so I was like I need to go and learn. That's why sabir has been so good, because it's like so foundational for muslims and that's why I was like, yeah, but there's a couple of different people that do it all.
Speaker 3:I think the main thing is putting yourself into an environment where you can learn, because, um, it's a bit like quran. Before I didn't use to learn quran, but now, part of the program, I have a quran teacher who I'm with every week and every week says, okay, you're learning this this week. And I'm like, oh, my god, I actually have to do it. Um, and it's in my head. It's not even because I want to learn the quran, I just don't want to upset the teacher. Okay, uh, but at least, at least it gets you doing stuff, at least it gets your mind thinking and reading the quran.
Speaker 1:And you know, obviously it'd be better if it was for the right reasons do you think that played into kind of the financial coaching that you do today? It's like okay, you need someone on your back to like help you out and that's.
Speaker 3:That's a big angle we're approaching it from, and I think that's a big reason why we think people benefit from it okay.
Speaker 2:Accountability is like the number one reason that I think people really like, really want help. They say they want to learn. How much do people really want to learn? They want the answers and they want to get to a desired outcome. So how do you get to the desired outcome? It's through accountability. It's knowledge and accountability. I think that's a nice thing, like whether you have a personal trainer in the gym, a quran teacher, arabic teacher, someone who's going to show up and make sure that you've done your action fine okay so you did all this, you were going through the spiritual journey, you had introduced him to Seville.
Speaker 1:Clearly, you also saw this gap in the market, and this is what we're talking about maybe 2022. You know what I?
Speaker 2:don't really remember how we came up with the idea.
Speaker 3:I do, oh fair enough, we were sitting in your we're sitting in the car outside your house after bjj, I think. Oh yes, bjj is brazilian jujitsu. For those who don't know, very normal sport.
Speaker 3:Loads of people do it okay, you're making a little bit weird um, and we were talking oh, we should do something together. We start a business you know Everyone's hopes and dreams Very naive, and I had a little suggested you suggested a tutoring business. Ah yes. And then I said, well, I've already started making some videos on finance or something like that. I said why don't we do something in the finance industry? And then bang, we began. We didn't do any market research.
Speaker 1:It was just kind of leaning on strengths that we had. Yeah, okay, fine, okay, so you focused on education your own skills as co-founders, how you work well together. Then you were going to figure out the audience and the market afterwards yeah, I was just hoping. I was just hoping everything falls into place yeah, fine, and you're still working on full-time jobs so I am leaving my full-time job for another full-time job for now mashallah um, but ahmed mashallah has actually left.
Speaker 2:You have?
Speaker 3:recently yeah, I left like a few weeks ago, which was a big shame. I think adil brainwashed me with all the if my parents aren't watching this.
Speaker 1:Is this how they?
Speaker 3:find out uh no I think I, I think um the the sabir journey, really my islamic awakening journey really led me to leave my job. I used to have a lot of conversations with my CEO about religion. Guy Butler is quite a small company, it's like 20, 30 people. Very nice company, lovely people. You could talk about anything and I used to talk about theology a lot and Islam would come up over and over again and I got so convinced in the idea of Islam and things like that and my passion is always that one day I hope to convert someone. Never done it before. I don't think I've got the right.
Speaker 3:I don't think I've got the right pattern to do it or anything like that, but I got. I had to. I was having a conversation one day with my CEO and I said look, I believe what I'm saying, so much so that I'm thinking of leaving the job well because I'm a I'm a broker, I broke bonds.
Speaker 3:Bonds have interest in them, and that's not what I want to do with my life. It's like, oh my god, let's go to the meeting room, uh. So then we sat in the meeting room for a while and I said, yeah, I'm gonna leave. This is a weird thing. Um, I'm I'm bad at so many things when it comes to religion. One of the things is dry, very bad at making trap. But I made up two things one to be able to leave my job. The other one for greater faith. Leaving my job because it's such a good job, the hours are so easy, the money is so good. I was there for over 10 years, 13 years. Wow.
Speaker 3:I had a junior doing all my work for me. I honestly, it was really the dream it was a dream. It was a bit boring at times, but it's a type of job where you can put your feet up on the desk yeah, it gives you time for bjj, exactly, exactly, and it was.
Speaker 3:It was a, it was a wake up at six and then you leave the office at five. So I have to. It's it's quite early, but then you leave at five and there's no work in the evening, no work in the weekend but subhanallah, the journey that you've come on to.
Speaker 1:Not only you know. Start practicing and really believing this, but now to actually change your entire source of income, something that is purely halal it's really commendable.
Speaker 3:I didn't change my income. I went from income to no income.
Speaker 4:No but it's commendable. It's the journey that you're going on and that's coming, and that's coming, but it really says a lot.
Speaker 1:Before we continue, I hope you don't mind me asking what was the? Was there one thing that convinced you that, okay, this is the right thing to be believing in?
Speaker 3:Oh, islam wise, it was the Quran. I kept going back to the Quran. There wasn't one thing in particular. I remember. Once I was reading the Quran I said, oh, this book is a miracle, but I feel like god is angry. God, that's, that's how I felt it. But so I couldn't marry up the two um, and I think for me the big thing was to stop asking so many questions. Why is there suffering in the world? It wasn't questions like that. They're, they're more philosophical questions about oh, who created god and and how and how does this honestly like these?
Speaker 1:questions are mad like if we were to get them now wait just to give you some of them. Give me a taste but what about?
Speaker 2:is it the best system? Sorry?
Speaker 3:oh well, I said, I said this thing, for example um, it's inevitable that some people will go to hell. Right, and people will go to hell because of the rules that were put in place by God rightly so. But in theory, if the rules were changed or the message was made a bit clear, there'd be a lower percentage of people that would end up in hell. Because I can't say Erebus is going to heaven or hell, but you can say that roughly 5% of people are going to go to hell, or 10% or 50%, whatever 50 whatever.
Speaker 2:So we don't know that number.
Speaker 1:We don't know that number if you were looking back at it historically yeah, I've never heard the statistical analysis of how many people were going to go to hell, but now I'm thinking about it it's a bit like rolling a dice when you roll it.
Speaker 3:When you roll a dice, yeah, you don't know what number you're going to get one, two, three but if you roll a thousand dice die, die, die you know that one sixth of them are going to be a six. Sure, it's the same with people. If you create a billion people, you know roughly this percentage of people are going to go to hell because of the situation they've been put in, because of how the message has been delivered and because of how clear it is, because of how our minds work. Maybe.
Speaker 1:But then I also think about the Hadith. Where was it Hadith? Or is it mentioned in the Quran? I can't remember now where. Even when Faraun was drowning at the bottom of the sea, dabrilla alayhi salam came and started stuffing dirt into his mouth so that he couldn't say shahada, so that there was no chance that he would be forgiven, which means that even someone as low and horrific as that person, there was a chance for him to escape.
Speaker 3:Obviously there's a chance for everyone, but it doesn't change the statistics.
Speaker 1:No, but that's the system. I guess in that the system is a little bit broken in favour of going to Jannah, in that if someone really really wants to, they could seek repentance, they could, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's easy to seek repentance and it's easy to go to hell, but at the same time, lots of people still fail the test, sure, okay and could the test have been made a bit easier? Could the quran be made a bit clearer? Could alcohol be made halal. Could this have been okay if? If that slight change was made, would more people end up in heaven? Yeah, does that mean that god isn't merciful?
Speaker 1:anyway, just just like I'm getting a taste of these dinners now.
Speaker 2:It'll just be like it'll be hours and hours of conversations, like sometimes I'm just there, like I don't even know how to come back to this. Like he's a mental it's all.
Speaker 3:It's all theoretical stuff, but I feel like a lot of it in the end.
Speaker 1:I think it's a waste of time it's very interesting to think about, though you don't get, because I've never had these thoughts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never really like went down this path. So it's interesting to see how other people think a very unique individual yeah, oh, in a good way I think
Speaker 3:I think I think that was just my test. And islam is submission right, and I think you do have to. You're never going to understand everything. No, you can't. And just because I at the time I was, I wasn't in 100 agreement with everything that islam said. It's not like I've convinced myself with the the whole atheist story either. It's just I don't know. I don't know what's right. So how do I know what to follow? How do I know what to not, not not to follow. And this is annoying thing. When I used to speak to my ceo about it and I say, oh, I believe this and this and this makes sense and this makes sense for me, he goes well, you're um inclined to become a muslim because of your upbringing, and I said, well, you're probably. There is a big bias there and I can't ever prove to myself that the reason I chose Islam isn't because of that big bias in me.
Speaker 1:Had you been born, I don't know, like in New Zealand, yeah, like Maori, yeah Right Would you have discovered Islam.
Speaker 3:I wish I knew the answer. I wish I was born, but we'll never know. We'll never know, we'll never know alhamdulillah I guess there's a reason for it.
Speaker 2:We just don't have the hikmah, we don't have the wisdom to know why.
Speaker 3:So it's a great blessing to be born slim, but at the same time it's a great test, because if you fail the test, yeah it's like you were given the answers and you had the knowledge yeah and you still chose not to believe. So it's such a great burden for sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm seeing two very different personalities at the helm of this very exciting new company. And what I want to ask is because the viewers are probably thinking- what are we? Watching. I'm finding this very interesting, so it's cool. What was it like when you first went out to the market? Because, did you see, was your aim to educate people as to the dangers of Ripper, to show them what is actually out there, to actually like? What was the mission of nisba? Of nisba to help, and what is nisba? What does it mean?
Speaker 2:the mission was never to kind of go out and talk like so openly. Oh, riba is really bad. I think people know it. Like people know you know don't, if you have money in a savings account you're earning interest. It's hard on, I think. I think that's pretty like common knowledge. The idea was get put your money to work and let's try and break it down in a nice, easy and practical way. So we started off basically trying to do social media shorts really, really poorly and then we started to do events because we thought you know what I like teaching. Ahmed has done some events as well. We thought this would be a nice way to do introductory concepts and the first time we did it we were like we broke down all the topics, or ahmed came up with all the topics and it was like three hours long and we had these poor 14 people in the room with us for like three hours going through isis, sips, pensions, all of it. Did they enjoy it?
Speaker 1:to some extent. Yes, yeah, they did.
Speaker 2:I think they did enjoy it uh, it's just, we just thought look, people don't understand the stuff and you speak to anyone and you say what's an isa? That like, oh're like. Oh, it sounds like interest, it sounds haram, that's true. So the knowledge level is so low, so why not? Let's just try and make it really easy and fun for people. And that was kind of the mission I don't think we ever set out with we're going to change the world or we're going to do anything like that.
Speaker 3:And I actually did them just to educate myself, to try and sort out my pension. I thought, instead of trying to figure out, let me learn the proper way, I'll just do the exams and I would love, love doing exams. I just finished doing my CFA, had free time in the evenings. What should I do now? Let me enroll into another exam, because I don't like wasting time. And I thought, instead of trying to be brave and do a business, let me just do exams, because that's an easy way to pass time and because I had the knowledge.
Speaker 3:But at the time I wasn't really investing in a halal way. And then I started slowly moving my money to halal investments. I realized, oh, there's this fund and what's the difference between this fund and this fund and what about this fund? Why they're? What's the best to cook fund to choose? And after I kind of got that new knowledge and I was applying it to the financial advice stuff that I had learned about, I thought, oh, this is quite interesting and most people don't know about this, probably because I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1:So let me talk about it from a practical, from a practical side were you aware of the other industry players out there at the time, islamic finance gurus or wahid?
Speaker 2:ifg, I followed from a long time ago like they were the ogs. Yeah, I remember following them and you guys remind me of a young ifg not not ibrahim.
Speaker 3:I think we're not the same age. A better version.
Speaker 1:You're saying that's a bit harsh I did not say that but like an early version in that it was so content heavy and content driven and the branding was really unique and interesting and it was bringing a new, younger audience to islamic finance is what brought me to islamic finance was what ifg was doing back then in those days. So I wonder if you guys know your role in the industry now and what you guys are doing, and I guess what? What does nisba mean?
Speaker 2:has a few meanings. So from uh, one of the meanings is that association to something else, so that you could be associated something else, which I think is quite nice because, in effect, when we are doing these comparisons of different companies, there is an association.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, nice.
Speaker 2:That wasn't the intention. You came up with the name Nispa. I don't know why.
Speaker 3:It's also kind of percentage in Arabic. A secondary meaning is percentage Nice, but really good. What was really good is that the URL was available. Okay, yeah. And it's a nice short name. Yeah. I just had loads of words written down on a piece of paper. I wish I had a nicer story for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like you guys. It's so cool to have someone who's like not media trained. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like coming on the podcast is like all because then?
Speaker 2:when we're seeing like it work, we're seeing the real story. Are you saying that we're not media trained?
Speaker 1:not your story, not your your own backstory, your own pitch, because usually we hear the same pitches over and over again. It's so rehearsed that it's kind of lost all meaning you know, it's definitely not rehearsed, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:No, yeah so there you go okay, cool. So then now how I see you guys. So if people check out what Nisbo does today, you can go onto their very nice website. It is very good compared to a lot of the others out there. You can see comparisons of savings accounts, investment products. You can see calculators for, like, how to calculate yours guard. You can get financial coaching. People can sign up to that. Is there anything else you guys do?
Speaker 2:So just to kind of, I guess, to lay the foundation. What we're doing is we are an education platform. At present, we try and educate Muslims how to invest your money. So if you are one of those people that is able to save and not spend more than you save, you should be putting it to work. So the idea is you either are one of the very few people that knows what to do with it, and if you're part of the majority that doesn't know what to do with it, you can come to us and we can try and help you out, educate you and empower you so you know what to do with that money. And we do that through three different tools. So we do social media, we do events in person, online and then on the website. We're trying to make more tools to help people and just kind of bring up the financial literacy so they can actually start accessing products like kestrel fider uh, who else might be? Let's say, nesta or gatehouse savings?
Speaker 1:yeah, or gatehouse savings account so we have.
Speaker 2:We actually, alhamdulillah. We used to have like spreadsheets everywhere and now we put it on this website where it's live prices. So if you want a halal savings account, you can go onto our website and you can just filter on what you want and it pulls through the live prices. So it's quite nice, uh, if you want to do it, if you know, if you're a little bit more experienced and you know what equity funds are and you want to do some sort of comparison on them, we have all of the Sharia compliant equity funds on our website and you can start doing some comparison is and what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Kestrel is a fintech on a mission to help over a billion people to grow their wealth without compromising on their beliefs, and we're doing that by launching our very own digital bank later this year here in the UK. So if you'd like to sign up and become one of our first 1000 customers who get free access to all of our services for life, please sign up through the link wherever you're listening to this podcast. Free access for life means access to features such as our sharia compliant current account savings products. Investing is the likes of gold, crypto, stocks and shares all of these features and more, but we're only making it available to the first thousand customers, so please check this out.
Speaker 1:It's not just about avoiding interest. It's about ensuring that our money is being used to do good in the world and not for all the things that banks are putting it towards, whether it's funding wars in the Middle East, pollution, housing crisis, what have you? So please sign up to Kestrel today. Thank you. Now back to the show. Very cool. Where do you want to take this? Do you want to be more? Stay as education, or do you want to turn it into like a? Um, what do you call it flagstone right, or you know those ones where you can actually sign up through the platform and they'll manage the money and you can even switch savings accounts very easily. It's funny.
Speaker 2:We've had all of these ideas yeah the idea. I think the concept is we will always have an education on because it is so critical yeah, for sure, no matter what fantastic marketing yeah, exactly, it's a great way to get customers, no matter what we end up launching in the future, inshallah, so the education piece will always remain. At present, we are launching a financial advisory that will support the high net worth individuals very cool because if you're a rich muslim, and you have lots of spare cash and no time to learn how to invest.
Speaker 2:You might want someone to manage your money and the only options out there at the moment are like St James' Place and all these other places and they're not well-versed in Sharia-compliant investing. There's probably been five, six Muslim independent financial advisors, so Ahmed at the moment is launching that Inshallah, in the next few months that will be available. Launching that in the next few months, that will be available. Nice, okay. So that's the first step into kind of making our way into the fca scene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's. That's only going to serve a very small percentage of people, and then, ideally, we would like to have a mass market offering in the future.
Speaker 3:We're still not 100 certain on what that is yet, but I um, I always said to adid and I think we've just done. This is following the path of least resistance in business. Yeah. I think what you're supposed to do in business is you're supposed to go after the best idea, but I think we're going after the idea with the least work, which was education. You don't need FCA approval to do education.
Speaker 1:It's a smart way to do it. It's a smart way. When we originally started at Kestrel, we wanted to be a digital bank and what put us off is when we did the financial modeling, we were like this is not going to make money, yeah, yeah, 10 years, and it's so expensive.
Speaker 4:We need tens of millions to get to get it done.
Speaker 1:So then we moved away and we said, okay, what's the cheapest way of getting a license that we could do something, and it was open banking at the time it was very cheap for for us to become an appointed representative of it was TrueLayer back then and use them to do open banking so people could just connect their accounts and we could do stuff with the data Create a budget for you, a savings plan.
Speaker 1:We had an investment marketplace at the time and all of that and it was just like building the closest thing to what our dream was, as cheaply and as quickly as possible. And we managed to do all that in three months, like quite quickly. So, yeah, that path of least resistance routers is a very good way to test things out as rapidly as you can, because I think it's YC who say that if you're not launching something within like a timeline of a couple of weeks, then it's not a test, it's a gamble, it's a bet that you're making. If it's not a test, it's a gamble, it's a bet that you're making. If it's going to take you months to actually launch something and put it into product and put it into the hands of a customer, you've got no idea what you're doing and you're just investing and wasting your time. So you need to build something. That's taking you. You guys know all this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I didn't know that, so you're wasting our time?
Speaker 1:Not at all, because you're doing a lot of stuff at the same time with your content. You must be learning loads. So I want to ask you guys what do you think are the number one problems for Muslims in the UK? And you're mainly focused on the UK, right, but what are the problems that you guys are seeing on the ground?
Speaker 2:level. Well, I always look at these different statistics. Most people don't know, but there's like 5 million people in the UK that have less than £100 savings Wow, million people in the uk that have less than 100 savings. Wow, like 34 of the uk adults have less than a thousand pounds. So people have barely even saved any money.
Speaker 2:And I just see it as, like most of us are all second generation, maybe third generation, so our parents, like you know, really struggled to come from abroad. They came here so that we could get a good education and a good job and, alhamdulillah, I think muslims have done really well in terms of the corporate careers and that's helped with income. So that's kind of fixed the income issue that we previously had. But what hasn't happened is we haven't fixed the wealth issue. So all of that income that people have been making, they don't know what to do with it and so it just means it only lasts one generation.
Speaker 2:So when it comes time for the like planning for the kids, there's nothing ready for them. So the kids are back to square one. Oh, I have to get a really high paying job. Oh, I have to go through all of this struggle, so it's now okay. So, okay, we've pinpointed the problem. The problem is wealth creation. So you know how to make money, but do you know how to grow it? So I think, along the way, we've really learned that people are very good at making money, like the muslims in this country are really good at making money, whether it's business, corporate world, whatever it might be, they just don't know how to grow it why is it fair to say muslims are bad with money?
Speaker 2:no, I don't think it is, because I think if you go to like uni students and you did like a survey and I'm pretty confident, a muslim uni student will have more savings than a non-muslim unit, because because a non-muslim will always spend on alcohol and going out, yeah, and like we, we speak to many muslims, like we go to all the university events and they all have like a thousand pound, two thousand pound in their savings. You go speak to an 18 year old, that's non-muslim, they won't have that. It's after university and that's when they overtake us, because then they've started investing from the age of like 21 and we don't do anything, maybe never is that a Muslim, non-muslim thing, or is it a class thing?
Speaker 2:Class. Yeah, I think it's a global issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, and that if your parents invest, you're much more likely to.
Speaker 2:And it's literally generational knowledge being handed down, like I have non-Muslim colleagues and whenever I speak to them I always ask, like what are you doing in terms of your investments? Because I'm terms of your investments, because I'm always so curious and some a lot of the time, if you can tell where they come from middle class backgrounds, they're always like I actually don't know, but my dad just did this for me.
Speaker 2:Oh really, yeah, he opened up a lyser for me and he deposits cash into it every single month wow or my dad opened up an iso for me when I was 18 and he told me to put 50 pound a month in, and I knew nothing about it, and so I just carried on with that habit, and their parents just grabbed them by the hand and they did it so true, you know I mean so many of us.
Speaker 1:We never picked our banks. Our parents opened it up for us when we're 16 and you know it's the same for a lot of products yeah yeah the same. Okay, wow. So if muslims are not bad with money and that we know how to make money, what's the way of fixing it? Is it the comparisons? Is it just the awareness?
Speaker 3:it's the education part I would have given a different answer to you oh, go on, let's hear your answer I would have said I, my mind is more focused on the investing side.
Speaker 3:All right, lots of people don't have money, but lots of people don't have money all over the world. It's true that muslims are less wealthy in the uk on average compared to their non-muslim counterparts, but maybe because it's because we're a newer generation or something like that. I'm not sure, but I think when you asked me that question, I thought about it from a very much investing aspect. What is there available that is available for non-muslims that isn't available for muslims? And, to honest, there's a lot of stuff. You want savings accounts the Sharia-compliant savings accounts. You want equity funds there are Sharia-compliant equity funds. You want an alternative to bonds? You've got Sukuk. You want alternative platforms? You've got Nesta, you've got Qwik. I think there's enough in terms of selection. But sometimes I feel like it would be nice if some of the funds out there, if more of them, were done by Muslims, if less of them were done by HSBC and BlackRock. I feel like, why is that dangerous? It's not dangerous. I just feel like it would be nice if that was the way it's like.
Speaker 3:Oh, muslims are founding companies which support Muslims as opposed to non-Muslims are founding companies which support muslims yeah, as opposed to non-muslims are founding companies which I don't want to say it like this but extracts money from muslims.
Speaker 1:I'm awful listen. I put out a survey. People on the group know that what I'm talking about, but are you guys in the london muslim tech bros whatsapp group?
Speaker 4:we're not really bros I feel like you guys are like the bro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um so this is what's like. Over like 400 people in it, and I went to an event by a new islamic bank that's launching and it became quite apparent that no one at senior leadership was muslim, and yet they were talking about how we really want to help uplift muslims. I think we saw this yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 3:Why is no one a muslim there?
Speaker 1:yeah, okay, so let's not, let's not name, okay um, and then, I think just during the event, I just um, just wrote, put out a survey and said do you care whether your islamic bank is muslim owned or not? And it's. It causes big, big debate, like dozens of people getting involved, and some people said, yeah, it shouldn't be, it should definitely said, yeah, it shouldn't be, it should definitely be Muslim-owned, we shouldn't be taking money out of the community. But then some people who were quite vocal about it and we've had conversations about this. It's not in a bad way, don't worry you know who you are.
Speaker 1:He said, actually I'd prefer if my money was not sat with Muslims. It should be sharia compliant, but I would prefer that it's not muslim owned, because I don't trust muslims with my money. There's been too much bad stuff that has happened in the past, um, and that really struck me. Firstly, because I'm in the industry. Oh damn it's like straight to the heart, yeah, but secondly, I was like maybe loads of people do feel that way. You know, do most. Do we trust each other? Do we uplift each other?
Speaker 1:no I don't think so, to the point where we have had bad incidents for the longest time using an islamic bank. That was synonymous with compromising compromising when it comes to user experience. Or, you know, my brother used orion bank for the longest time, but every time I would get a phone call with him at a rest, when he's at a restaurant by his office just saying my car's not working, I don't have any money, can you come and pay this bill? Or he's like stuck underground because the car just stopped working as he was trying to tap out, to the point where he just had to use monzo, you know. So I don't know if that's something you're seeing, but it's definitely something our customers have reported and is going on in our community. I think that people feel like, when it comes to wealth, I would trust an hsbc or a black rock, but I wouldn't necessarily trust muslim name, arabic sounding namecom, you know I.
Speaker 2:I think obviously you have a scale, some people that perhaps yeah feel more aligned to religion, first over money, would want a Muslim run institution, whereas those that are perhaps slightly more geared towards, you know, reward over religion would be perhaps want their money managed by a non-Muslim. And I think you have that whole scale of people.
Speaker 1:But it's an interesting distinction, because we're not saying it's not Sharia compliant, no, no, yeah, they're both Sharia compliant. It's just one is run by someone who actually believes in it and the other is just there because who's capitalizing on it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, capitalizing I guess.
Speaker 3:Capitalizing on it. Yeah, I feel like that's a big point about it, isn't it? Someone who's out there you know, when you're in business, you're in he's out there to make money and he sees an opportunity. Um with muslims. I don't know if it's right or wrong, and sometimes I think about this with mcdonald's completely off topic, but similar topic. Yeah, I always wonder why is mcdonald's not halal? No, I'm not saying we should. Anyone should shop at mcdonald's, especially now should eat at mcdonald's, but there's a muslim market for sure.
Speaker 1:Why would you not go for it? I think about this with nando's all the time. Have you noticed?
Speaker 2:we went yesterday and it was so frustrating to the one in holborn? It's not, and it's not that. Why would you know what?
Speaker 1:and they're like within the same square mile so westfield stratford, westfield stratford, your nando's isn't halal. You have to go outside of the shopping center to find a nando's. They're doing it on purpose because they're chickens from the same source. It was like uncovered by a daily mail no way it's like they still have one slaughterhouse right. It's a branding thing, because they know like, oh, if it's halal, it's going to get overrun by muslims this is what I feel right like, don't come after me.
Speaker 1:Like, but genuinely I think it's like anything which is a halal nando's. It's just like you'll just see muslims in there you'll see couples.
Speaker 2:You'll see families the restaurant will be trashed but it's kind of like just washing their feet in the sink.
Speaker 1:It's the vibe you put out, whereas westfield stratford predominantly is. I don't know how to put it, but it's white customers who are going there yeah and that's just I think, the I think they do it that way strategically. So what?
Speaker 2:so what you're saying is it doesn't matter if there's a Halaire sticker or not. I can go eat there.
Speaker 3:I'm not saying that's the only thing I know. It's like a bad word to me. No, 100%.
Speaker 1:It's not.
Speaker 2:it's not so all of you watching. Forget the sticker.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna make it very clear at this point in the anyway it is um the same source, but when someone sat there telling you this is not sharia compliant you have to kind of you have to kind of listen to it together, but I don't know, like I can't remember the point we're making. We went so far off topic now.
Speaker 3:I think it's just it's. It's nice when someone does something for muslims, yes, but at the same time I wonder when someone doesn't do something for muslims because it's a big addressable market. Yeah. What's the reason? Are they doing it on purpose to?
Speaker 1:Nando's is.
Speaker 3:I feel, I really feel they are yeah, and I feel like why would McDonald's not do it? I was actually searching it just now. I was like, oh, is there any halal McDonald's in the UK? They're not the switch.
Speaker 2:recently, five guys made the switch and everyone was raving about it on social media so all right.
Speaker 3:So if non-muslims make a sharia compliant bank, good on you for doing stuff on muslims when lush released their watermelon soap. Good on you for doing something that agrees with muslims. But at the same time, if a non-muslim opens a sharia compliant bank and a muslim opens a sharia compliant bank, I'd go with the muslim every time.
Speaker 2:Personal opinion even if it was but a way worse product it's kestrel wise.
Speaker 1:We want to be better. We want to be at least as good as revelry really because revelry is like the gold standard. We've got to aim if we shoot for that and we hit monzo, then I think that's pretty good, maybe starting but, um, but that's what we want to get to right. You guys were at MTF. Yes, your design looks super cool, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's what we're aiming for in September. So we're going to start off with a Shibuya-compliant current account which gives a return, which hasn't been done in this country before, and then we want to introduce savings products, and then we want to address the liability side of it as well and introduce some credit products, some insurance from global products that we can bring here um through our banking partners amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the intention. It would be so nice because when we always talk about savings accounts, people like people's first question is oh, can I like use it in a shop? I'm like, no, no, no, a savings account is an e-savings account.
Speaker 1:It makes sense. They've never used it. Yeah right, they've never used a normal savings account. So how would they know? Yeah, exactly, this is.
Speaker 2:This is the way it's because you know when you have a bank, your savings accounts always link to your current account yeah, so you could always do that quick, quick transfer to your current account and spend it if you really wanted to, but obviously these savings accounts are not linked to anything, do you?
Speaker 1:guys talk about alternatives, so beyond, just like fractional property, but crypto gold is that something you see a lot of questions on. We talk about gold.
Speaker 3:We don't like to talk about crypto, because there's a lot of scams online with crypto, finding this one woman. She actually sent me an AI video of my face and she got scammed out of a couple of grand because From you, not from you from AI of you From someone who made an AI video.
Speaker 3:It was a terrible video, but some people, I guess, they just fall for stuff and they end up transferring money into crypto and they lose money. So I think of it as a way to kind of protect our audience, because if I talk about crypto, if you try and get scammed by a fake Nesbitt account and they talk about crypto, you're going to think it's.
Speaker 1:So if you ever hear these guys telling you to move your money into something, it's probably not them, it's not us.
Speaker 2:Yeah we never ask you to move your money anywhere. We're just educating you. You do what you want to do with your money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's almost a rite of passage, though, for someone to try and use your face to scam. That happened to us recently, where our TikTok there's just like fake Kestrel TikTok accounts, and what really hurts is they've got more followers so it looks like legit um, and they're doing the same thing. They're dming people. Thankfully, people we knew so.
Speaker 1:I got a message from arfa, who runs mtf and islamic makers and she's like I'm pretty sure this isn't you guys just saying can you sign up to the telegram group? We've got this crypto that we want everyone to invest in classic, isn't it?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, it's just pump and dump schemes. I think it's really easy to fall for. If I'm honest, I don't. Yeah, I don't think we could even say like oh, you know, people need to be more sophisticated. No, I think genuinely, people will fall for it, like people need to be really careful.
Speaker 2:No reputable brand will dm you saying put your money here yeah so like just take it as a blanket rule if any brand is dming you saying put your money somewhere, don't listen to them but the video one is scarier right, because that's becoming more yeah, I don't know if you guys have seen, like the yeti guy on tiktok I love the ai.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think he's really cool, but it's like you don't know that. No, I don't really know bigfoot, bigfoot and yes, bigfoot.
Speaker 2:Yes, best friends, no, what like?
Speaker 1:us. Yeah, you guys get up to more hello activities, but it looks really real like really really real. Um, and the voice, the. I think the voice is the scariest part because, like before, you could always tell really when it was like an ai voice, but here they're getting like the tone and the inclinations right, um, so it sounds like proper sentences with the right accents and everything okay well.
Speaker 1:So what are you hopeful for in the industry? Because you've done a comparison, you pretty much know this universe better than anyone else. What do you think is lacking right now and what do you hope to see?
Speaker 3:I wish there was a little bit more competition in terms of the players out there, a bit lower fees. Fees is a massive thing for me, um, but at the same time I, I think I said to someone I showed someone a fund and I said, oh, maybe muslims could have an alternative, and they responded saying, oh, but then it'll be more expensive, um, so I I think fees is a big thing, but it's difficult for muslims to create products for a fund why would the fund be more expensive?
Speaker 3:if it was made by muslim. Yeah, typically if.
Speaker 3:If a muslim company makes a fund, they won't be a large company yeah so they couldn't launch the fund at scale okay uh, whereas a vanguard can charge under 0.1 percent fees, hsbc, yeah, they can charge 0.3 and I think the cheapest fund run by muslims is probably the whitehead fund at 0.55 in the uk. It's still quite expensive. I mean, relatively speaking, it's quite expensive. I mean, if you compare it to the vanguard global, which is at 0.06, it's almost 10 times more expensive. So you know that that would be good if there was a bit more competition in that space of people launching funds. And, of course, the other big big thing is funds that agree with the ethical values of Muslims. Yeah, we get that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the big difficulty is how do you standardize this whole kind of ethical piece, because it's not really ESG, it's beyond that. Like you always give this great example with your mother-in-law asking you about Costco, so his mother, I don't know, can I say Obviously your family's Palestinian, his in-laws are Palestinian.
Speaker 2:So they called him up and said look, I heard some things about Costco, can I shop there? And so Ahmed went away and did some research and it was like, well, they don't have any bases in Israel, they're not like funding Israel in any way, but some products that they sell are Israeli. So where do you draw the line? And, like, defining that scale is so hard and who decides it? If it were to be decided by a board, there's always just going to be uproar. Some article will pop out that a company gave money to a charity and the charity then gave a subsidiary arm and then ended up in Israel somehow.
Speaker 1:This happened at a Kestrel live event once, I think it might actually be on camera. Arma will remind us, but we launched a boycott screener which is a big, big part of our debit card that will flag if you're spending it like a McDonald's and suggest an alternative. And someone was just playing around with the calculator during the live Q&A and they typed in Gymshark and Gymshark came up as compliant. And then someone said but didn't they use an israeli model to like?
Speaker 1:okay, for one of the things and then someone else said, yeah, but isn't that okay? Like do you want to boycott them because of that? And someone was like, yeah, we should, right, we should boycott everyone. And it's like, well, if we were going to do that, I think our universe of like products will just be going chicken cottage and nowhere else, I think is what would happen.
Speaker 1:Um, so, yeah, you're right, it is very difficult. Rehan, we had rehan amit from halal stocks. Uh, we had him on a couple of episodes ago ago and he said actually the standards within aoffi aoffi, the sharia standards body, based in bahrain. Um, he said that ayofi actually already does kind of have the framework for what should be boycotted and what shouldn't, but it's just not being implemented right now because it hasn't caught up politically with what's going on in the world yeah, so it's not.
Speaker 3:I think even the whole esg thing about how muslims could have been on the forefront when it comes to esg, but a lot of the rules and regulations about Islamic finance are made in the Middle East, where ESG things that we would be concerned of here are a big part of the economy over there it's oil country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly so it's not it's not really going to. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3:But what you were saying earlier, we had we were speaking to Rehan as well from Halal Stocks. So we were speaking to Rehan as well from Halal stocks and so we were interviewing with him. Yeah, okay, yes, yes, and there was there was one where I was talking about the platform and I actually spoke to him about this. I spoke to him about one of the stocks Novo Norsk that they were holding within the fund.
Speaker 3:And I we went out for a meal with him. It was very and it was in no way a negative thing about Halal stocks. I think they're doing something great, they are for sure and they're screening the stocks and everything like that. But you know, I want to talk to our audience as if I was talking to almost like my wife and telling her about an investment. One of the stocks that they had within their selection was Novo Nords.
Speaker 3:Novo Nords there was an article about how they denoted money to both Gaza and Israel for hospitals and I was like, oh, this stock is in there, but they're a pharmaceutical company and then one of the people who even works with us like this, but they're like, oh, that's all right, because they're giving it to hospitals yeah, you think it's hospitals yes, it's fine, but when I talk to someone else, yeah they're like no, no, that's not right.
Speaker 3:Even money that's going to hospitals in Israel is not okay. And I said I'm not the authority on who's to say that should be okay or shouldn't be okay, but just go to show it's a minefield. It's a minefield and you can't really.
Speaker 1:So do we need an industry body to just put a stamp of approval on one set of standards and that's.
Speaker 2:To give a peace of mind to people, because we can't all be a part of. I guess there will have to be an industry standard and then the individual have to take a final choice isn't that um bds? But is it?
Speaker 3:I don't know, they have a really small list, don't?
Speaker 1:they. They have quite a small list, but they have a system, a tiered system, which we even applied at at kestrel. I'm gonna get it wrong off the top of my head, but like. Tier one, which you must, must avoid, is anyone who's like actively funding the genocide and what's happening there, um, or has a base of operations in a, in a territory, um, in a palestinian territory.
Speaker 1:And then tier two is like, slightly beneath like they've been, um, like they've invested into the israeli market or something like that, or they have a board member who's like, associated with something that's going on and then tier three is they've like vocally said that we're in support of what's going on over there right now, which is like the lowest tier, and then it's for you to choose Red, amber, green, which one, which tearing you want to avoid.
Speaker 3:So I think that's probably the best. Yeah, it's just sometimes hard to collect all that data qualitative yeah and I get them constantly track it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a whole data team, just about a screen scraping.
Speaker 1:You have to constantly track it. Yeah, we have a whole data team just about it. So there's the screen scraping, manually updating, and then we get feedback from people so people can just write into us on a certain brand If they search it, they don't agree with it, they can write to us saying why they do or don't. So it's a little bit of community-led, a little bit of screen scraping.
Speaker 2:But it seems like the perfect blend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's the way to do it so yeah, yeah, well, that's what we're trying cool.
Speaker 2:I feel like have you guys had fun I feel like I don't feel like we've talked anything.
Speaker 3:Finance though like anything helpful for people I wasn't open to talk finance there was no actionable tips.
Speaker 2:There was nothing they could walk away with. It was just let's talk about the actionable tips.
Speaker 1:It's been good, though it's been really good. Uh, we do have a little bit of time left for someone who's listening and is like look, I've got about a thousand pounds, I've just graduated. What should someone be doing with their money realistically for the long term? They're 21 years old, just graduated. Maybe they they're looking for a job. Maybe they just got a grad job doish coin.
Speaker 3:Have you heard of doish?
Speaker 2:no, what's the other one, hyperliquid?
Speaker 3:no, you answer this question. No, no, please get it.
Speaker 2:Please say you're joking, please the difficulty is you can't ever say to someone this is what you should be doing, because everyone's circumstances are so different. Like you could have a 21 year old who is living at home, their parents are funding them and they've got a nice graduate job yeah you can have another 21 year old who is the sole provider for their whole family exactly so it's so difficult when someone comes up to us and says I've got x amount of money, what can I do with it?
Speaker 2:well, you need to learn what to do with it, basically because your life is going to keep changing and you need to know how to make those changes. When life changes you you need to know what to do when you lose your job, if you have a child, if you get divorced. You need to be able to cope with these decisions. So the step one is figure out how much money can you save every single month. You just need to come out with one number and that's it. So, whatever budgeting tricks or tools you do whether you're using Snoop or Emma or your Excel spreadsheet just come out with one number. What is that number that you can save every single month and you don't need to touch it for the long run? Cool, you've got the number now.
Speaker 2:Next thing define your goals. One when are you going to need to touch this money? If it's a short time horizon, consider low risk options. If you've got a long time horizon ie you are just saving for retirement. You've got a long time horizon ie you are just saving for retirement. You've got a 40 year horizon, you can potentially consider high risk asset classes, but the fundamental piece is always you need to learn. You know we run an introduction to Halal investing event and I think it is really good. In one hour it clears up a lot of doubt for people. It sets the scene in terms of what could you invest into? What are the basic things you need to know, and then from there you can go and do some more research.
Speaker 1:Where can people sign up to that nisblecouk?
Speaker 2:I think and it's free. It's free, yeah, it's free, and we try and do it regularly um, it's funny there.
Speaker 3:I want to bring up the story and I said, dad, should we bring it up? But, just to push home how you know big the education thing is. They always say you're really good at teaching a subject if you've just learned it, because if you just learned it you kind of understand the mental blocks to get over to teach it, whereas because I've been in finance for so long, everything's second nature. It's hard for you to relate.
Speaker 3:Exactly it's difficult when I'm so I'd roll off the tongue like oh, your p ratio, market cap, blah, blah, blah. And then ad at the he'd always say to me you can't say fund without explaining what a fund is. You've got to explain what it is before you introduce a word. And as time goes on, common questions that we get is do I have to speak to HSBC to open up, to invest in the HSBC fund? And recently we heard that someone was looking at the Whitehead app and they saw the risk profiles conservative to aggressive.
Speaker 1:They thought I whitehead app and they saw the risk profiles conservative to aggressive, they thought I'm not aggressive person, and when I saw conservative, they thought I don't support the conservative party.
Speaker 3:Look, we're laughing but, it's a real it happens, it happens, it does happen. And you promised you wouldn't laugh.
Speaker 2:No, I did promise, but because it's so, quite like, honestly, these questions are so common and I think it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not even shameful at all. No, it's not. It's like it's so difficult it honestly, these questions are so common and I think it's not even shameful at all.
Speaker 2:No, it's not Like it's so difficult, it's such a mindfuck. Everyone's like oh no, finance is really easy. No, it's not. Like, why are we lying? It's not easy, it's not easy.
Speaker 1:You're not taught it, you're kind of like just thrust into adulthood. Yeah or your parents already knew it, so you're going to know it, but for most of us that's not the case. And then what's going to happen? You're going to hit 40s, 50s, just pretending like you knew it, still having no money that's how a lot of people live.
Speaker 3:That's why I say education is so important. The funny thing for me is I really encourage it, this whole coaching thing that we do, even though I always just think our coaches what a rubbish. But at the same time I struggle to think if I would pay for it myself. However, a close family member of mine recently started doing PT sessions at the gym and I thought what a waste of money Because it's ridiculously expensive and you're just running, you're lifting weights. You can do that by yourself. I don't go to the gym because I can't be bothered. And then I signed up with this PT as well for some free sessions and I thought, oh my God, now I'm actually going. All right, I pay 10 times the price, but I actually go.
Speaker 3:And this is going to have huge impacts on my life later on, because now I'm mid thirties, I can already feel my body breaking down and sometimes, when you look at our parents' generation, who weren't very active in their youth and they're already breaking down in this 50s and 60s, where you see their non-muslim counterparts running marathons yeah, it's not, it's not our parent generations run marathons and I just think, oh, it's very important so that there is value in sometimes paying more for something or paying for something you wouldn't do, just to enable you to do it but you know, what you said at the start is like with your quran lessons it's accountability, exactly accountability.
Speaker 2:But you know what the nicer thing like with your Quran lessons? It's accountability, exactly, accountability. But do you know what the nicer thing is with investing compared to everything else, like whether it's Quran, whether it's diet, whether it's gym? You will only see results at the gym or Quran if you maintain it. With financial knowledge, you only have to do a little bit of effort in the beginning, that's true, and then it just does it by itself.
Speaker 2:So if you just do a couple of months of work, you can put your hands up and that's it. You're sorted for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:For sure. The one thing I'll add to your tips is Islamic savings accounts exist. A lot of people don't know that, so I've spoken to so many people who have tens of thousands that they've just amassed. It's just sat in a current account because they're too afraid to make the step to investing. They kind of like hear about wahid or curate and they get caught up in it and they don't do anything and they think there's nothing else out there. But there are sharia compliant bank accounts where you can put your money and they'll give you a sharia compliant return, um and it's fscs protected as well, which is the like holy grail of what banks are offering um, which are out there so you can check that out on.
Speaker 1:This was calculator on their website as well to compare the different savings accounts. So it's not the risk of investing, but it does give you a return on the money, which is at least beating inflation and, inshallah, we'll be offering something similar at kestrel as well, no, but it's such a valid point because I did in this example the other day.
Speaker 2:If you'd save two thousand ten thousand pounds um, in like 2014, that's worth less than seven and a half thousand pounds a day by just keeping it in the bank, you've lost two and a half grand yeah, not actually, but because of inferior because of the purchasing power has gone down yeah it's almost a no-brainer, like if you're not going to do anything at all, at least start with a savings account.
Speaker 3:I told my dad to open an islamic savings account. He didn't. He doesn't trust islamic banks. Why he? I told him about fscs, he said. He said, um, I hope it's okay to say this. He said that he feels like the government is always against muslim-owned companies and he said the government wants to just crush them and shut them down, so he doesn't trust keeping their, his money, in the islamic bank. And at that point I stopped discussing it with him, even though after I told him about FSCS and everything he's like, nah, I think your father's right in some ways.
Speaker 1:Oh really, islamic companies financial services companies do struggle with the FCA a little bit because the FCA does not understand, like sharia compliant processes and sharia compliant financing, to the point where it's made a lot of islamic finance companies um turn away or have to change their business models. Nesta is one of the few companies that actually managed to convince the regulators to come up with a new license to do exactly what they did, because it's kind of different, if you think about it, like buying a property in a sharia compliant way, it's not quite debt, it's not quite investing, it's kind of something in between. So it needed its own license and that's where it got there.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, your father's kind of right in a way, so we shouldn't use no, no once you've gotten that stamp, once you've gotten the, regulation, it's all good.
Speaker 1:It's all good, though. Um, what are your backgrounds?
Speaker 2:I forgot to ask okay, like ethnically, yeah, I'm algerian okay, okay I'm syrian syrian.
Speaker 3:Fine, but pause the video there and let the viewers guess while we stare directly at the camera. Yeah, and put a timer down. It's not fun at all. It's not fine. No, where are you from?
Speaker 2:Pakistan. Why do you think that? Because you told us you just flew back from there.
Speaker 4:I could have been from work. I could have been from work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, I assumed Massive racist.
Speaker 1:Very racist, very racist. Why else would someone go to Pakistan?
Speaker 2:You know what? I had a lot of Muslim shooters with like Pakistan, and they were always just to sell me on the tours and I'm like, no, so you really need to go to Pakistan.
Speaker 3:I've heard good things about Pakistan. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of backpackers there. I'm like, yeah sure, Airport's full of white people.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, loads of them, yeah, just going there making YouTube beautiful scenery though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have heard the mountains.
Speaker 3:It's like switzerland and then even in karachi, just like the food scene in lahore and and all of that. It's not just like super busy, it's very busy. You wouldn't go there with, like family, kids, unless you're from pakistan.
Speaker 1:I've taken um yeah, no, there's. There's like whole um like resorts, especially in the north, in kashmir. It's like beautiful up there, beautiful country, the climate's really really nice. It's the Himalayas basically, so you've got like the second highest mountain in the world, k2. A lot of mountaineers go there. Good wildlife, the snow leopards.
Speaker 2:You know what I don't?
Speaker 3:know if it'd be on my list.
Speaker 2:I think I'm sold.
Speaker 3:My wife likes warm places.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Pakistan gets really hot, really hot, you were talking about mountains and snow leopards and in my head I was thinking oh, it depends on the time of year you go there yeah, yeah, there you go a little nice ad for pakistan tourism board sponsor us what?
Speaker 1:about syria.
Speaker 3:I've always wanted to go to syria. I've never been well, you can.
Speaker 1:Now it's open. Yeah, in theory.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, my wife always wants to. She keeps saying to me when are we going to go back to palestine? Because, uh, so I think I have to book that first. It's hard, not back to palestine, but go for the fact. She's never been to palestine, I've never been to syria, so we're like really fakes the white the white arabs.
Speaker 1:It's um. It's very hard, though. I know people who got rejected recently um trying to get through because they they go through your phones your whatsapp.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's mad. I saw some people I have to get a second phone. Yeah, just leave the other phone at home. It's not worth the hassle.
Speaker 1:That's a smart way to do it, yeah and then, even then, if you're tied to something like poor ibrahim from dean developers um, because they run the hack for gaza yeah campaign. So they just looked him up. They found that his name is linked with it, so he was trying to cross at the border and they didn't let him through no way so send them back. Yeah, send back um same with sarkib, sarkib from um uh, who we had, sarkib ahmed, who runs, simply smashed.
Speaker 1:He was oh yeah, he was on our on our podcast recently as well formerly um in data over at goldman sachs then turned all of that into burgers. Go watch the episode. It was a very good episode. Uh, we should have got more views, um. But yeah, he got turned away because they just found something on his phone like he'd forwarded a message, so how do they find that?
Speaker 2:like, how can you be scrolling that much to find?
Speaker 1:I think they've got key times, they search and, yeah, all kinds of stuff. We've talked about palestine in this podcast so many times. I feel like we're going to get shadow banned. Inshallah. Please watch, share, like and subscribe.
Speaker 2:There you go, anyway yeah, it does, it does happen, it does, it does for sure, all right, so we're running slightly short on time.
Speaker 1:This has been really fun. I think it's the most fun I've had on a podcast. You told you it's been a good one. Are there any final words that you want to?
Speaker 2:whether you like it or not, you have to learn this information and if you don't, you and your family will suffer because you're not going to grow your wealth in a sharia compliant way. So either you put it off and you'd come, never come around to it, and your kids will be really annoyed at you, or you just get on with it and you learn, put a bit of effort in, either do it yourself or come and get some help from us. But you have to learn there's no, it's not. This is not a vitamin. This is like a painkiller. You need to learn this knowledge yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you said suffer, I thought you was in, like you're going to john. Yeah, like super intense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you are gonna suffer pay the body now, uh, yeah, we do lots of free stuff as well. And I think someone once messaged us and said, oh how can we charge this much for coaching and things like that? And I say I think we do a lot of free stuff as well. We do free intro to hell investing.
Speaker 1:We have a free community we should do some sort of collaboration, yeah, some sort of event. Um uh, nadia, who is your? What's her title?
Speaker 2:operations, head of operations and outreach, and outreach. She's just, she's number one. She's incredible. She won our hackathon recently.
Speaker 1:Yes, she's everywhere so I see her everywhere, yeah like nearly every week I've been seeing her, you're gonna get these guys on the podcast.
Speaker 3:You've been ignoring my email. We always make a joke how you're gonna poach her?
Speaker 1:we offered her the internship and she said nah, just give me the coaching to start my own thing oh wow, she's really good she's amazing, very good. And on that note, guys, assalamu alaikum, it's been a genuine pleasure having you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much thank you for listening to the Muslim Money Talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to Muslim Money Talk, wherever you might have been listening to the Muslim Money Talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to Muslim Money Talk. Wherever you might have been listening to this, give us a like and share it with someone who you think might be interested. It really really helps us out. Thank you, as-salamu alaykum, and see you next time.