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
Money Myths Muslim Financial Advisor: Property, Pensions, Bitcoin & More! | MMT Ep 58 - Faisal Sheikh
A candid conversation with financial advisor Faisal Sheikh challenges the Muslim community’s obsession with buy-to-let property and the recent outperformance narrative of Sharia funds, urging a shift toward backing real, productive businesses. The episode also wrestles with crypto’s value (or lack thereof) in Islamic ethics, practical portfolio constraints for everyday Muslims, and building financial literacy—especially for Muslim women.
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/
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Show Notes:
00:00 - Opening
09:25 – Sharia funds landscape; small/mid-cap basics
12:30 – “Outperformance” myth (US tech overweight) + risks
19:19 – Deejah Money: goals-first, empowering Muslim women
27:17 – Crypto: speculation vs real utility (Islamic lens)
34:01 – Practical steps: emergency buffers, limited options, risk
36:35 – Personal story: scarcity mindset, decisions, teaching kids
60:20 – Parting advice: buffers, education, and when to seek advice
You think it might even be haram to invest into property.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's a slightly more extreme version of what I said.
Speaker 1:Is that not what you said? That's cool. That's what stuck in my mind. Let's start with that.
Speaker 2:And look, I'm no scholar, yeah. So I'm saying this a little bit tongue in cheek when I say that you know, investing in property is not Islamic, but capital. In Islam, as I understand it, is meant to fuel ideas, energy energy.
Speaker 1:It's meant to move Profit generation rather than rent seeking. Yeah, exactly Because a lot of people say, okay, the Islamic funds are outperforming non-Islamic. A lot of the Islamic banks like to say this as well.
Speaker 2:If you're running those funds. I don't think it's right that you go out to investors now and say, hey, look at the last five or 10 years of data Sharia funds do better magically, than non-Sharia funds, because it's's not true, it's just an accident of history there's very limited pension funds available right now.
Speaker 1:It's really just hsbc and wahid has one out there. What would you say people do?
Speaker 2:it's a tough one and, let's be honest, right, most people that have gone into bitcoin have gone into it because the price has gone up and they think yeah I could make money quickly from this.
Speaker 1:Why else would you go into, it right I?
Speaker 2:guess, and is that an Islamically valid activity?
Speaker 1:We're not scholars.
Speaker 2:Muslim entrepreneurs and I'm really, really passionate about this. Okay, muslim entrepreneurs, if they've successfully had an exit, okay, buy one or two properties by all means, right, but seriously, they should be backing the next version of themselves. Okay, right, okay. If they're not doing that, how on earth are we going to grow the Muslim economy? If they're not doing that, how on earth are we going to grow?
Speaker 1:the Muslim economy. 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. Today, I'm really pleased to be joined by Faisal Shaikh, who's a financial advisor for high net worth families and also something called a fractional chief investment officer, which we're going to find out all about what that actually means. We're going to be discussing his take on what Muslims should and shouldn't be investing in, and that ever popular asset class property, and whether we should still be so attracted to it. We'll also be discussing why it is that Sharia funds really outperform, and is that really a reason that we should be investing into them, as well as crypto and a whole bunch of other asset classes, and, of course, what money really should mean for Muslims. As always, I'm your host, arif Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money. Talk, faisal. Assalamu alaikum and welcome to the show. Wa alaikum salam, thank you for having me. Yeah, no, I think it's.
Speaker 1:We met only last week, that's right, which is crazy. Kind of weird, right, yeah, at Palestine House house, and it was like a very quick introduction. Yeah, uh, yasmin, your co-founder has been on the um, been on the podcast before. She's the founder of dj money. Yeah, she's very cool. Check out that episode if you haven't already. She introduced us and it was a very interesting conversation. You said one thing to me which made me think I need to get you on the show, which was you think it? Can I say it? Yeah, go. Was you think it? Can I say it? Yeah, go for it. You think it might even be haram to invest into property?
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's a slightly more extreme version of what I said.
Speaker 1:Is that not what you said? That's cool. That's what stuck in my mind. Let's start with that. Okay, right, is it haram to invest in property?
Speaker 2:So here's my thinking. Okay, it's about, uh, uses of capital and uh, we are and I think muslims, um, disproportionately are kind of obsessed with property as an asset class. You speak to any entrepreneur that's made any kind of money and the first thing they'll be doing is investing in buy to let portfolio. That's the main thing they're doing, and from my point of view, it's a crying shame, right, if you have a tech entrepreneur that's built a software business and had an exit, right, they're then going to take that surplus capital and stick it in property.
Speaker 1:And I should say that's your day job. You're advising high net worth families, especially entrepreneurs, of what to do with their money. Is it mainly?
Speaker 2:Muslims, no. So actually, strangely, out of my dozen or so clients, I only have one who's a Muslim client, and the rest are all non-Muslims, as it happens. But when you invest in property, there's a reason why in French, german and Italian, the word for real estate is basically versions of immobile. You put the money in, in, and then what happens?
Speaker 1:the money stays there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely it doesn't do anything, it's just kind of contribute to the economy yeah, and I think it's a shame that entrepreneurs don't um I mean by all means like buy a house or two, whatever, but they, in my opinion, they should be urged to think about investing, um in ideas like fueling the next startup, fueling the next sector and look, I'm no scholar, yeah, so I'm saying this a little bit tongue in cheek when I say that you know, investing in property is not Islamic, but capital in Islam, as I understand, it is meant to fuel ideas, energy.
Speaker 2:It's meant to move.
Speaker 1:Profit generation rather than rent seeking. Yeah, exactly, yeah, okay, there's a case to be made for it. It reminds me of the story of one of the Sahaba, abu Dhar radhiallahu anhu, who he took a rather extreme view on this and, I think, clashed with some of the other Sahaba on this where he strongly felt that no Muslim, at any point in time, should hold more than three days' of expenses as as capital, and everything else should be spent and put into the economy or put towards um, you know allah's will, and helping people in that way. Um, which is quite extreme to the point where I think he was um. He was placed in baghdad, he was sent over there and the uh, the leader of baghdad at the time, wrote to to the khalifa, who I think was omar radhi allah, and I was saying please take him back, because he's a nuisance he's clashing with a lot of people with his views, um, but it is something I've heard before.
Speaker 1:I think it was daoud vikery, who's based in malaysia, who said something very similar to me, where he said, in his view, he thought that savings accounts might not be fully sharia compliant. Of course he's not a scholar, but his point was the money's just sitting there and of course, the banks are doing something with it. An islamic bank is using it for a purpose ideally to lend it out to customers, but his point is we should be investing it into things which are doing some good in the community, rather than just seeking rent yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's not something that's um exclusive to muslims or muslim economies. Um, I don't know if you've heard of henry george, henry george, henry george, yeah, so he was, um, he was an economist um back in the 19th century, uh, english guy, and he successfully actually, in the end campaigned for a land tax as being a much fairer way of generating tax revenues for the economy than taxing income and what he called real capital. So he didn't class land as capital and his reasoning, you know, sounded very Islamic to me. Right, he's like the land is there already and so whatever you produce purely from the existence of the land should not be yours to keep. If you do something to develop it or you invest in a business or some machinery or you do some kind of improvement, that's fruits of your labor and you should keep that. But the actual rent value of the land itself should essentially be a common good should be a public good.
Speaker 1:So whatever you do with that land, you can keep it, but you just need to pay a rent for the use of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that would deal with situations such as, obviously, land becoming extremely valuable in certain locations and people just buying it, sitting on it and then collecting the rents from it.
Speaker 1:Why wasn't that?
Speaker 2:Because none of the landowners liked it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Right, of course. Now there was actually an act of parliament that was going through in the early 20th century so it successfully persuaded the government of the day to pursue this, but it was just killed.
Speaker 2:I can't remember if it actually passed or not. I guess many of the members of the House of Lords would have been. They would have been up in arms. I only know about this because a friend of mine, Amal Pandya, who is obsessed with this topic, has spoken about it quite a few times, has written about it. And yeah, it's all about rent seeking. Wow.
Speaker 2:Right, there's I can't remember who said this, but essentially one way of looking at all of the um wealth accruing in silicon valley. Right, it's kind of all flowing eventually into the pockets of the landlords.
Speaker 1:How is that?
Speaker 2:through increased rents that everyone has to pay. Well, essentially right, because that's if you watch that, look at the flow of money. That's kind of winds up tax the rich tax?
Speaker 1:no, no, no, definitely not. No.
Speaker 2:Gary stevenson, yeah, well yeah, I'm not I'm not massively in tune with gary stevenson, no. What I would bring it back to, though, is, I think, muslim entrepreneurs and I'm really really passionate about this okay, yeah, muslim entrepreneurs. If they've successfully had an exit, okay, buy one or two properties by all means, right, but seriously, they should be backing the next version of themselves okay right. Okay. If they're not doing that, how on earth are we going to grow the muslim economy?
Speaker 1:okay, so you're all about startup investing.
Speaker 2:You know startups or small businesses, or it doesn't matter what have you yeah, okay don't just sink it into another portfolio of buy to let houses please like. I just can't take any more of those what about funds?
Speaker 1:sharia funds, you know. There's a few of them out there. There's a debate as to how islamic they truly are, because, of course, a lot of companies on the boycott list are also sometimes seen as sharia compliant and they're included in there. But what's your feeling on that? Would you ever advise people to put their money in one of those funds? Sure, there's very limited pension funds available right now. It's really just hsbc and wahid has one out there. What would you say people do?
Speaker 2:it's a tough one, okay. So I've spoken to a lot of high net worth individuals, obviously, and also a lot of high net worth muslims, and what I can tell you is the portfolios that I'm able to construct for my high net worth clients who aren't muslims are granular, bespoke, have a range of different asset classes they can, they can get exposure to. Okay, you know very simply, right, simple example um, if you want to, you can get a uk small to mid-cap value active fund you created your own fund no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:So this is one of the funds that we often have in our client portfolios, right, actually, the one I'm thinking of is called um cape roth capital. This isn't a recommendation, by the way, just none of this is an investment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, recommendation anyway, yeah but run by an incredible guy called adam rackley um, who, as well as, as well as running his fund, um, has done things like um done a trip to the the Arctic, and so on and so forth. Okay, and there just isn't a Sharia-compliant version of anything like that available Of a small cap. Yeah let alone small cap UK value-oriented.
Speaker 1:For people who don't know what's the difference between a small cap fund versus like a FTSE tracker Got it Very simply small cap refers to just the size of the company, right.
Speaker 2:So you'd be investing in listed companies, companies, so companies that are on the stock market, but the ones that are smaller end. What's the benefit of doing that? The benefit of doing that is, um, over the long run, um, there's tons and tons of evidence to show that small cap companies generate better returns in terms of share price performance than big cap. I know that sounds weird, because in the last five, ten years, all of the gains have come, apparently, from the big tech companies. Yeah, that's quite an anomalous situation.
Speaker 1:Is that because larger tech companies are really relying on inflated valuations?
Speaker 2:perhaps I don't know exactly what the reasons are. I know the valuations have increased over the last five, ten years at a much faster pace than their revenue and profit growth, even though those have been very impressive as well. But generally speaking, and if you step back and think about it for a minute, it makes sense. A small company that's got revenues of, say, 50 million or 100 million a year clearly is going to have a better chance of trying all other things being equal a better chance of growing that rapidly and therefore generating a good return on investment, than a company that's already doing $180 billion.
Speaker 1:They are going to plateau.
Speaker 2:At some point you would imagine.
Speaker 1:Gosh. So you said something else very interesting to me, which was you didn't think, because a lot of people say, okay, the Islamic funds are outperforming non-Islamic. A lot of the Islamic banks like to say this as well. These fund managers say Islamic outperforms non-Islamic. We have many non-Muslims who are investing into this, but you said that's not good enough. That shouldn't be the reason.
Speaker 2:Why is that Because there's a simple reason why Islamic or Sharia-compliant funds have been doing well in the last five, ten years they have massive exposure to US tech companies, to US tech companies. The MSCI World Islamic Index, for example, which is often used as a basis for Sharia-compliant funds. Last time I checked it was about three or four months ago. 15% of that fund was in one stock Microsoft, 15%, 15%. And this isn't the USA index, this was the world index. So that level of concentration.
Speaker 2:In us yeah, it's just has been great for the last five ten years, but the last five ten years aren't the same as all the other periods of time that you might have in the investment market and sharia funds have typically not had exposure to, for example, um you, alcohol beverage companies, defense companies, some of these sectors that for a long time were really out of favor and the tech companies were really in favor. So we had a skew to the set of companies that happened to do really well In the last 10 years, in the last 10 years. So my point that I've made to you about that is, if you're running those funds, I don't think it's right that you go out to investors now and say, hey, look at the last five or 10 years of data. Sharia funds do better, magically, than non-Sharia funds, because it's not true, it's just an accident of history, it's just because they happen to be concentrated in those big tech companies that happen to do well in the last five years.
Speaker 1:And is it you're looking at your crystal ball? Do you think that's not going to be the case for the next 10 years?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but I think the probabilities are stacked in favor of some kind of reversion to the mean. I mean, in every previous period of history where we've seen valuations reach extraordinary heights, like they're threatening to now with the big tech companies, the bubble bursts, yeah. And even if the bubble doesn't burst, it kind of slowly deflates. Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:Normally that's the way of things and it's not a kind of I don't know. It's not something you can just say is going to happen for for definite. But it also makes sense because the larger those profit margins get, the greater the incentive for competitors to come.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course take it, it's not. It's why kestrel came about, it's why deej is doing what they're doing. Right, we wouldn't exist if there wasn't room to play. Um, okay, so for people watching, they might be thinking right. So you're telling me don't look at property, don't look at Sharia funds. Yeah, maybe I should invest into you know, my local startup, but in reality I don't have enough cash to be doing that? What should I be doing?
Speaker 2:It's really tough. I have to declare I'm very privileged. The business I run looks after a handful of very high net worth entrepreneurs and their families. They have investable assets of multi-millions usually and they're not constrained by considerations of complying with Sharia law, so we can build very, very bespoke portfolios for them, Sure, Tailored to what they need. For ordinary folk and I include myself kind of in my own pension it's it's difficult If you want to stick with Sharia-branded funds. There's such a limited range.
Speaker 1:There's the iShares one which is by BlackRock. There's HSBC has a number of them. Now. There's, like you know, bespoke. There's like Wahid they have their own, but other than those, there's not really too many out there and they're all sort of investing into the same things.
Speaker 2:Yes, and there are a couple that are doing some of the things slightly different. So I think Saterna has Saterna.
Speaker 1:Capsule yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have a kind of global fund and I think their top holding is like Broadcom. So Broadcom is still one of the top like eight companies in the world, but they haven't got exposure to, you know, nvidia, microsoft and so on. But Saterna will be our next episode actually Wow.
Speaker 1:So tune in, Tune in next week. Cool.
Speaker 2:My issue with all of them, though, is you're just getting broadly the same, like large cap global equities, and that's a good start if you're starting from like having nothing available. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we're so far away from what we really want to be, have be able to access. Right, I want to be able to access, ideally, not just passive funds but versions of actively managed funds which are in line with shrewd principles, so they're kind of screened and filtered, but offer that those different flavors. You know, I want a japanese fund, I want a european mid-cap fund.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want, um, a kind of commodity like a miners fund is the answer funds, or is it something where you can, you know, copy the investment habits of some sharia trader? That's out there, right, there's there's um. I think you can use trading 212 to do that's out there, right, there's there's um. I think you can use trading 212 to do that. Um, there's other people, so there's um. Are you familiar with halal stocks? Yeah, yeah, so they're building something very interesting which is meant to be an actively what's the word they use for it? Like a algorithmic trading, actively managed portfolio so it automatically adjusts. Yeah, is the idea. So it's kind of like it's changing automatically. It's not a person doing it, but the fund is adjusting itself. Um, and it's something very interesting. Are you seeing more of that come about?
Speaker 2:so I met um rahan yeah founder um signed up as one of his kind of founder because just when I spoke to him at the muslim tech fest, yeah um, loved what he's, what he was doing, and I personally find one of the best ways of learning is to commit, pay the fee, whatever it is, and use the service. I think he's doing something really cool. So it's clunky right now. So at some point I don't know if you've used Trading212 and tried to use one of those I've used FreeTrade.
Speaker 1:I've used FreeTrade and I buy crypto through Revolut and Coinbase.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, we'll come back to crypto. Okay, yeah, but it's kind of quite clunky to implement and you get an email saying we've updated the portfolio. These changes are happening. I think you have to go in and do something, do it yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fine, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Now he's got a roadmap. Yeah, yeah yeah, which includes, you know, eventually having like an active ETF. Yeah, obviously it costs money. You need scale to make it worthwhile.
Speaker 1:So I hope he gets there. Inshallah, inshallah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, there informed investors who kind of know what they're doing, um, but this touches a little bit on deejah, right, the startup. I'm involved, so we should talk about deejah. So, for people who didn't catch that episode with yasmin al-mahari uh, yasmin is a three-time uh former founder who's from egypt. She's now in the uk and she's setting up deejah money, uh, which is a financial literacy and empowerment app focused on Muslim women, but I think anyone can really use it, and originally they were very, very focused on literacy, but I think now they want to get into investing as well, and you've come on board as their chief investment officer.
Speaker 2:Precisely. So, yeah, tell me about it. What do you want to do? Okay, so, dj, as you've touched on, is really solving a problem, first and foremost, of engagement. Right, something like 95 I think it's actually 96 of muslim women in the uk are essentially disengaged from investment, and um, when you say disengaged, as in, they're not doing it at all, they're not interested in a mix of both.
Speaker 2:Okay, potentially, and the reason that came to mind talking about Trading212. So I'm okay with going to my Trading212 account, fiddling about with it, looking at the numbers and blah blah making the changes. There's something about a lot of the fintech and a lot of the investment world. That is tech bro oriented.
Speaker 1:It is very yeah, it is very. I've spoken to. I mean even conversations with my wife and I'm like. Does any of this appeal to you? Yeah, whether it's stuff that we're putting out, or ifg puts out, he's like no, it doesn't feel like it's for me, it feels like an exclusive club of, but it feels like very much something coming out of the brother's side of the masjid, something which is not really for them. Yeah, and even like a certain annoyance that is felt by them.
Speaker 2:And Yasmeen mentioned it as well, and I've heard it from a few sisters that this isn't.
Speaker 1:it doesn't seem like it's for them or it's a safe space for them, which is interesting. Like for Muslim women to feel feel safe, does it have to be built by a muslim woman, do you think?
Speaker 2:look, it's certainly going to help, right? Yeah, I mean, this is why representation matters. You know, having, um, somebody who you can be fairly sure understands your issues and your perspective is a great start. Yeah, there's something around that I think Yasmin has really understood around. Forget the kind of underpinnings of the kind of investment side for a second, but just think about, you know, what are the real world financial problems that people want help with.
Speaker 1:And starting with that right, whether it's like HUDGE, saving for HUDGE or a child's education.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your retirement eventually house deposit absolutely um addressing um the challenges of women who are recently divorced, yeah, for example. Right um starting with that first and um and then moving to the, to the investment side, rather than going on about the investment side, yeah, and then moving to the investment side rather than going on about the investment side, and then you kind of figure out what you're doing about it.
Speaker 1:We tried that a couple of years ago because we were very much like okay, everyone cares about investing, but no one really focuses on the steps beforehand, the budgeting, the saving towards your goals. But we noticed that people, as soon as you give them the tools to do something manually, they kind of check out. Now we had a budgeting and did an auto budget for you. We still have that tool and you could create savings parts and put money automatically. But as soon as you had to do something yourself, people checked out. Because they're like.
Speaker 1:I'm doing this and it's not generating me any return, so I don't really care.
Speaker 1:And then they'll check out. And then we had an investment marketplace as well, where we had a few partners involved. There People could buy gold, invest into fractional property, but because it was taking you to a third party website, the conversion was quite low. So our thesis at Kestrel is we want to bring everything in-house and do as much automatically for you. That all starts with the debit card, with your spending, and you'll get a return on anything in your current account. And then we want to introduce buying and buying gold. You can store your money in gold if you want, and then crypto as well, because I kind of got into it through revolut made it very easy yeah, they did, and it's not incredibly, sharia compliant.
Speaker 1:They're also opening an office in tel aviv now and you know, so does it go on the boycott list. So we'd love to have like a I wouldn't even say muslim friendly, but like an ethical version of that. So what, what's your take on on that? Sorry, I've just like dumped no, no, I'm gonna.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say I'm gonna take a few things in there, right? So firstly, just very briefly, I know in the last um I think the last episode you touched on um the whole challenges of the boycott list, yes, and so on and so forth. I'm like it is an absolute nightmare yeah okay, okay, I mean take Microsoft, for example. Okay, as I understand it, there's no measurement basis of what they're doing.
Speaker 1:There's no metric that says what they're doing is… Non-sharia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, what we know is kind of an alleged misuse, as they say, of their technology to do terrible things right.
Speaker 1:I think it's specifically some of their software is being used in drones, in drone technology.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the case that I heard made against them was their software and obviously this is an allegation was their software is being used to record and then capture phone calls and that was then being used to target. Fine, it's terrible, obviously Like a heinous crime is being carried out in front of our very eyes. My point is is that enough to say they should be boycotted? Or, and if it is, what's the measurement Like? How are we going to make that into a sustainable measure Now I know, in the last episode.
Speaker 2:You know it was kind of like just use the bds list and I know.
Speaker 1:But there's also a tip, like we're working on this right now, because the idea is, if you're tapping your card somewhere, say, like a mcdonald's then we'll flag it and say here's an alternative, but there has to be a tiering system. Yeah right, it's like, okay, this person is directly involved. Like they're actually investing into weapons of element which are being used in Israel, or this person has, like, used an Israeli model right in their campaign so there's like a tiered list there.
Speaker 2:But I agree it's more like an art than a science right right now, which means it's not repeatable, it's not scalable, it's not defensible. Yeah, and the um. You know, one of the crucial questions is, let's say, you did get to come to agreement and say, right, actually, microsoft is beyond the pale because of this action. It's a bit like case law, right? You then set a precedent which then you need to enforce consistently across all other examples. And how do you keep track of all those other examples? I'm not saying we shouldn't take this into account.
Speaker 1:I'm saying it's a really hard problem to solve. Hey, assalamu alaikum. Before we continue, I really wanted to share a little bit about what Kestrel is and what we're doing. 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 into 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, have you? So please sign up to kestrel today? Thank you. Now back to the show. It probably does make more of a case for why you should be investing into small cap or mid-cap stocks, because it's the smaller the company, the less likely they are going to be involved in things happening on the other side of the world. True, they're probably going to be, you know, confined to whatever their local geography is, so maybe that's the case for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe Interesting Crypto.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about it, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Because we've had a few crypto experts come on yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We had Ibrahim Al-Qurd, who you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah it was a great episode did really really well out of his early investment into Bitcoin, specifically in Bitcoin mining. We've had other people who are building in the Web3 space people like Murad Hussain and Shireen Lee, the husband and wife team building Takeda, and they're trying to revolutionize Islamic insurance using Web3. And since talking with these individuals, I've gotten into it. Revolut has made it very easy, so I started buying Bitcoin, which, alhamdulillah, has done quite well recently. They are quite pricey, so now I use Coinbase. Again, this isn't investment advice or recommendation. This is what I'm doing right now, so don't write to me if it's not working. What's your take?
Speaker 2:I want to take you back to, like I think it was 2016. Not far from here, I was invited to a kind of exclusive secret, basically event at the top floor of Shoreditch House.
Speaker 2:This is a Freemasons thing, it seemed like right, but you didn't enter through the front door. You had to go through a fire exit which was manned by a security guard, and then they checked your name off the list. And then you had to climb all the way up into this hot and sweaty room with dozens of people in it, and this was peak ICO craze.
Speaker 1:Do you remember the ICOs Initial coin offering? I do remember.
Speaker 2:So this was an alternative to IPOs.
Speaker 1:It was a very quick way for a startup to raise millions without having to go public.
Speaker 2:And with nothing more than just an idea, a coin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a coin and people would just buy the coin and give you money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it was just so. I'm old enough to have lived through the dot-com boom and bust. Okay. It was just so reminiscent of the days when literally people with one sheet of paper were raising millions in the dot-com boom bus. It was just didn't feel like there was anything to it, and my main question then was what is the use case for? Let's just take bitcoin right. What is the use case for bitcoin and it's 2025, it's nine years later, okay, other than the fact that its value goes up? I have not yet heard of please enlighten me if I'm wrong I've not yet heard of a single real world practical use case, and it's really important for the subject of this podcast yeah, yeah which is islamic?
Speaker 2:yeah right, what is the real world use case?
Speaker 1:so a lot of the arguments put there is that it's very akin to gold. It's like a digital form of gold in that it is finite. You can mine it. There's no, you can't print more of it. So it's anti-inflationary. Um, it does retain value but it does seem to you know, it's subject to speculation, so it really does go down and and can increase significantly as well. Similar to gold in that way, but in terms of like real value to the economy right aside from helping you to protect your money from from inflation.
Speaker 1:I don't have an answer for you.
Speaker 2:No, and I'm putting you on the spot. I mean, obviously I'm not expecting you to have an answer.
Speaker 1:No, I'm thinking about it, yeah.
Speaker 2:If we go back to, you know, look again, absolute disclaimer. I'm not a scholar when it comes to religious matters, but obviously I've read a lot about riba and what is constituted as riba, and there, riba and what is constituted as as riba. Yeah, and there's a clear distinction between, um you know, money and kind of productive activity. Right, money is always just a means to enable, to facilitate yes the productive activity. Um, if bitcoin is money, fine, then it can be used to kind of try and transact.
Speaker 2:People are not using it they're not using the money and, in fact, they measure it in dollars or pounds and they think about how much value is increased right, and they imagine cashing some of it out and being able to pay off their mortgage or whatever, right? Yeah, it's kind of kind of usage. Um, if we think about it as kind of productive good or service, it clearly isn't right. There's nothing happening, yeah, so that's my, that's my challenge on on bitcoin and I'm definitely I've looked into it a lot and I'm open and I'm keen to see where the where it goes, your argument is it's pretty much the same as property in that case, it's a rent-seeking activity.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's, it's, no, it's, it's different to that. It's um, it's purely speculative, true yeah, okay, and let's be honest, right. Most people that have gone into Bitcoin have gone into it because the price has gone up and they think I could make money quickly from this.
Speaker 1:Why else would you go into it?
Speaker 2:Right, I guess. And is that an Islamically valid activity?
Speaker 1:We're not scholars so we can't say We'll have to get Mufti Faraz absolutely shakes, or mantra is one yeah, totally, um, but yeah no. I guess it's not. If, if the definition which you're placing there is that, is it adding benefit to the society in some way? No, I guess not, unless it's an anti-inflationary activity which you know we we're trying to uplift muslims from poverty. Maybe we should get into it. I think web 3 as a whole, they there's a case to be made, yep Right. So like what Takedown are doing by building their saving circles as a response to giving people Sharia-compliant life insurance in some way.
Speaker 1:But that's more the mechanism. Yeah, yeah as opposed to the coin itself. Right.
Speaker 2:And I love that example because they're using this new technology to solve, to help solve, uh, you know, a long-standing problem, true, which is how to um, how to manifest what used to be the principles of insurance everywhere, which was this collective pooling, yes, um, in order to safeguard people that might be unlucky, right?
Speaker 2:and then the community comes together to yeah, to help that person yeah, so um, that is a great example of uh, using the underlying technology. It's very distinct from um, from from. Yeah, I would go further or kind of slightly abstract away from this right, and I'm like I'm. I definitely want to put, like my money and my clients money into companies that are producing goods or services that other companies or consumers or governments value highly enough to pay for so that they can make a profit. Give me any enterprise that's doing that. I'll back it, and this is where there is a link between my views on crypto and property right.
Speaker 2:I want capital to be put towards those people that are doing, you know, whatever products or services, as long as it's kind of of some use to somebody and isn't in prohibited areas.
Speaker 1:Well Castle's doing a funding round, so we should chat offline.
Speaker 2:Okay, definitely.
Speaker 1:But okay, okay. So, again I'm going to go back to the listener and say what the hell should I be doing then? Property? Again I'm going to go back to the listener and say what the hell should I be doing then? Property? No crypto. No, do I just go and like knock on a small business door and I don't see?
Speaker 2:it's really, it's really hard and and I'm sorry I don't have better answers, look I I can give a real example right.
Speaker 2:So, um, uh, you know, you know, got married, yes, fairly recently my wife had like congratulations, thank you my wife had multiple um, uh, you know pensions from different work places. So we consolidated them and you know she was very clear she wants it invested in a shrieking black manor. And you know she's in three fonts. Okay, I I'm not overjoyed with them, but you know there's one which is, uh, an emerging markets okay, uh, islamic etf. One which is a world ETF. Another one was a European Islamic ETF, right, With an EHG overlay.
Speaker 1:Are they all HSBC?
Speaker 2:No, it was a mixture. I think there's two HSBC. One was another one, I forget what it was. Right Now, I'm okay with that because how can I put it? It's like going from zero to one is a great start. Better than doing nothing. Get invested. Swallow your issues about Going from zero to one is a great start.
Speaker 1:Better than doing nothing.
Speaker 2:Better than doing nothing right. Get invested. Swallow your issues about how sure is it, blah, blah, blah, you know, like at least people are trying to do something which is in line with the assignment principles. Invest in that. So start there. Okay, I'd say start there. And then the main, you know, and I'm happy to say this, is advice. Yeah.
Speaker 2:For anybody listening. Take a step back. The number one thing that you really need to focus on is what level of cash savings you have and how many months worth of your ordinary expenditure that equates to, and you can pick a number of months that's good for you, okay. I have one client who has six years worth of wow yeah, because he can.
Speaker 2:If you've got, why not have 10 million in the bank and just keep it there, right, and it covers like years and years of his expenditure. I'm not saying people should do that, but somewhere between.
Speaker 1:This is sat in a current account for him. Most of it in savings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, in savings, okay, yeah, yeah, I mean not with us, but you know with, but the principle is the same, right, three months is often a good starting point, six months is better, and the principle behind that is too obvious to almost say right. But once you've got that buffer, you can make better financial decisions with the rest of your money.
Speaker 1:Of course it's like okay, that's the stuff I can't afford to lose, let's play with the rest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yeah, think about it. Take some risks. Let's play with the rest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay yeah, not play. Yeah, and think about take some risks. Yeah, take some risks. Yeah, okay, okay, cool. So there's two things I want to ask you about. One is you've joined dj recently. Yeah, what are your ambitions for it? Where, which direction is dj headed? In because I think it's come quite some way since we spoke to yasmin in december last year. Um and secondly, what informed your own views about money like? How did you get into this?
Speaker 2:so I'll I'll deal with the second first. Okay. Um, you know I talked about kind of three months buffer, six months buffer, you know that kind of thing. Um, probably the biggest single impact on me when it comes to money was um in 91 our house was repossessed oh god and um, we got, we got turfed out.
Speaker 2:I mean sounds terrible, but actually it. But actually it was quite an amazing experience and it didn't feel quite as bad going through it as when I retell it and people are like shocked. They're like wow, you're, how old were you? I was 14. You were 14. And you know there was I think there was already, I can't remember the details, but it was like second mortgage in the house.
Speaker 2:My dad had desperately tried to save it and he didn't. You know, ended up borrowing money from the left, right, center, from people, and then wasn't enough, went under um, turfed out, lived on the uh, you know, on the living room floor of friends houses for a while, like all eight of us lined up, you know, brushing our teeth in the morning, queuing up in the bathroom um a couple of council houses, and eventually resettled again um a couple of years later through a series of fortunate events. Was that quite traumatizing to you? It must have been right, because that was my introduction to finance. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so soon after that, I remember learning about bills and there was a time when you know a bill would come through and then one of us would be like, okay, who can take this? Yeah, and normally you would wait until you got the red bill. I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, okay, so if you, what's the red bill? Okay, the red bill is if you didn't pay your bill the first time around, like two weeks later or whatever, you get another bill. And if you didn't pay it then, four weeks later or whatever, you would get a bill and it would be red, marked in red in some way, and it would basically say it's overdue.
Speaker 1:Okay, so interest on it, or Well?
Speaker 2:whether or well, whatever, whether it's interesting or not, right, it would be like a phone bill or gas bill or whatever, right, and then one of us would pick it up and pay, sure? So, um, that was kind of the first introduction to finance. Now people react differently, um, to these kind of traumatic events in their, in their childhood. Right, it didn't make me entrepreneurial or anything like that. I know some people that would react to that and think, right, I want to build something, I want to, you know, do something amazing. I kind of had the, I kind of retreated back into, like just passing exams and, you know, just trying to go through the steady route.
Speaker 1:I think that's normal, I think being in that situation, why would you pursue a riskier activity? Yeah, true you know, like entrepreneurship, wouldn't you want to stay the course and just so in your mind, in the back of your mind, did you think I never want to go through this?
Speaker 2:um, I did think I never want to go through this, um, but the effects are incredibly long lasting, the reason I bring up yeah is, um, my point about decision making, okay, okay, the decisions that you make when you're in a position of scarcity or in your mindset of scarcity, are just so much worse than if you've got a mindset of abundance right. And and this isn't a new discovery by me this is well studied, um, and not just financially, but you know many other fields and I can attest to that, like the kind of the crisis mode mentality, the kind of, um, how have I described? I described like a bird, uh, in the garden, okay, right, it comes down onto the lawn and it pecks, sees a seed or something and it pecks at it, right. But if you watch the bird, right, it spends 95% of its energy looking around. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what you're like in crisis mode.
Speaker 1:Just looking over its shoulder and catching cats. Yeah, constantly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're just forever in that crisis mode. You know your cortisol levels are up, your stress levels are, and I worked with a really excellent coach for six months or so. Dr Huda. Thakur. She's also a trained neuroscientist, okay, and one of the things she shared with me which I didn't realize before, was when you're in fight or flight mode, your IQ actually drops Really, yeah, so you're literally less intelligent. That's why you're making worse decisions. You're reverting to a more primitive state Now.
Speaker 2:You're better able to handle the obviously the immediate danger or whatever, but that definitely informed my relationship with money and it's taken a long time to stop being scared of the postman. Really, yeah, just hearing that letterbox go, hearing that letterbox go. Or you know, even now my letterbox in my house is on the outside of the house for some reason, don't know why it is and even now I get this tiny frisson when I see a letter poking out of it. And that is an echo of what happened, yeah, years and years ago.
Speaker 1:You were a family of eight. Yes, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:And were wow, okay, and were you the eldest? No, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm fourth, you're four. Yeah, so three older sisters, me, a young brother and young sister um that, so I'm the oldest son, what happened to you?
Speaker 1:do you think that's of course has changed your? Relationship with money? Does it change how you interact with your children and how you teach them about money?
Speaker 2:it's kind of affected. How, um, I want them to engage with money from an early age, right, I want them to get familiar. Every opportunity to try and give them some cash actually, I really prize giving them cash rather than a card and say, like, go and spend this, hand it over, so it feels real, yeah. But otherwise it's tough with kids these days to get them to understand money. What they see is you want something, you just tap, you get it. So I don't have a good answer for how to handle it with them. With kids, I just think I always like to ask parents when they come on this like how's that forming their relationship with?
Speaker 2:their kids my kids are very young they don't.
Speaker 1:They're starting to understand. They've got like play. He's got he might have got a three-year-old son and a nine-month-old daughter, so she doesn't understand. But he's got like play money. And we're starting to do this thing where, like he runs an ice cream shop and he's charging 10. Uh, he watches bluey, so he calls them dollar bucks, which is what they call it in the show 10 or 20 dollar bucks for an ice cream.
Speaker 1:So he's starting to get it a little bit. But yeah, I do think about that a lot like the way my father grew up in quite, I think I'd say, like quite difficult circumstances. People who watched that episode kind of know where his mother passed away and he was kind of on his own and then he came into a lot of money quite quickly with his first job and didn't really know what to do with it. So he was buying houses and making different decisions. But he was young, he was like 20 years old doing all of this stuff and I think he had this idea that he never wanted his children to ever have to worry about this, which we didn't.
Speaker 1:Alhamdulillah, we grew up pretty privileged not ever having to worry about it, but it did mean that I had this weird kind of non-understanding of money. For most of my life I didn't have to worry or think about investments or saving. That's why I found myself working in financial services which is a weird thing where suddenly it's like oh okay, I was working on some of the big robo-advisors who were coming about, like Nutmeg and Invesco when they were looking at launching a REIT fund and a bunch of others.
Speaker 1:And that was kind of my first sort of introduction to what was going on, which is a bizarre kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and more generally, Arib, you know what you're describing is what every parent wants actually for their next generation. Right, For them to be more comfortable than they were. But there's a real paradox, because I don't think I would change anything about my upbringing, or it's difficult for me to say that I would change anything about my upbringing Because it wouldn't be you Right. Yeah. And you learn so much from that adversity. Of course, be you right. Yeah, and you learn so much from that adversity.
Speaker 2:So if you can somehow give your kids that adversity while also kind of making sure they're just going to be okay I mean I don't know what the formula is traumatize your kids exactly yeah, well, jensen, jensen huang the, the founder of nvidia right yeah he gave this um commencement speech to stanford university graduates um, and they, you, and halfway through the interview the guy it was all very friendly and the guy says what's your number one advice to this amazing group assembled before you and he said you need to suffer. And everyone laughs nervously and he's deadly serious. He's like I wish for you to suffer, Something like that, he says, and they're still laughing nervously and he's like I mean it, Like until you do, you're not going to learn and you're not going to achieve greatness. And that really stuck with me. That and the black leather jacket, which I love wearing.
Speaker 1:Should have worn it today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, should have done.
Speaker 1:Okay, so tell me about DJ.
Speaker 2:So, dj, yeah, I mean look Yasmin's, you know it's not a million miles from what Yasmin would have told you a few months ago. So, very simply, about empowering UK Muslim women to be better educated, to understand finance and why it's so important, okay, that they're in control of more and more of the household wealth amongst Muslims, whether that's through changing attitudes and norms where maybe traditionally they weren't so engaged in the finances. But now, these days that's changing. Increasing incidence of divorce and, um, you know, women sometimes finding themselves suddenly in charge of, like you know, a pool of capital, yeah, where, for better or for worse, the husband or ex-husband now has previously taken care of it. Um, it's about helping them. It's about being there when they're in that situation and helping them to learn and feel comfortable and confident making the decisions they need to for their life, for their responsibilities, for themselves, often for their kids, um, often for other family members, like you know, parents and so on. Um, whatever it may be, um, giving them the tools and the confidence to tackle that so.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned focusing on the things that come before investing the budgeting, the saving, building an emergency fund. When it comes to the investing, do you have any ideas of what you want to focus on, or is it too early right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're fairly early stage. The principles behind it, though, will be very much tied. You know, nothing unusual in saying this right Very much tied to time horizon. Unusual in saying this right very much tied to um time horizon. Um, what kind of goal it is. You know what the purpose is, and that will determine what kind of investment they they end up with that's appropriate for them, um, within the very tough restrictions of not having many funds to choose from right that's it, yeah.
Speaker 1:What if someone wanted to pick individual stocks and do that on their own? How do's it? Yeah, what if someone wanted to pick individual stocks and do that on their own? How do you feel about that if someone wanted to basically actively trade on their own?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, I I really wouldn't recommend it. Why? Because, um, an individual company can go up, down or sideways, so, um, you're just taking so much more risk and most people can't afford to take the risk I invested into.
Speaker 1:I did used to do some individual stock picking. I invested into coca-cola this is before the boycott and all of that so I did sell that and it was my only well-performing stock. I invested into an electric vehicle charge point company oh yeah, in silicon valley.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that just got listed. It was listed. Okay, yeah, which?
Speaker 1:probably should have told me something about it, but it was listed and um like a few couple of weeks after I just thought, you know it must be a good idea and then a week later, like 90 of its share prices got wiped out and it never recovered. And it's just still sitting there in my portfolio because I think if I never sell, then I'd never realize the loss.
Speaker 2:You're delaying the pain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, but it is gone and I think that's like I had that. I invested into Wise as well at the time, although I've since been told it's probably not Sharia compliant, so I need to need to get rid of that and divest, but it was doing well. Do you know something? It was doing well do you know something?
Speaker 2:um? One of the things that I've heard a lot from um high net worth muslims is this, this tangle of what is and isn't true, compliant the different views um coupled with when they've come into contact with things like mortgages, they're like wait a second, this quacks like a conventional mortgage. Right, it's just enough to just put them off the whole thing. Really, yeah, they're just like they're not going to go out of their way to invest in things that are kind of bad right, but they don't look for that career stand but they're just like you know what, I don't care.
Speaker 2:And there's even a perception of like the scholars are all out of touch and blah, blah, blah I know that's not true anymore Like increasingly.
Speaker 1:It's changing. Yeah, yeah, they're equally qualified in finance as they are. Yeah, I mean, just look at some of them who've been on our show. Yeah, Totally. But if the high net worth Muslims are not even supporting this initiative?
Speaker 2:then what do we have of growing this industry? It's a tough challenge and obviously I'm not saying all right, sure, sure, but I've heard it enough times and we've got a job to do to, I guess, educate and engage them too right, these are these muslims who've.
Speaker 1:I know it's like case by case basis, but are they old money have?
Speaker 2:they just come into money they're 40s okay, 50s okay, you know so, and they've made their fortunes yeah, or they've earned well or they've made a decent amount of money over the years.
Speaker 1:So it's not from their parents, it's them, no.
Speaker 2:No, it's definitely from them working yeah yeah, and they've probably tried and engaged with, but they did it like 10 or 15 years ago and it's kind of put them off for yeah, which is like before.
Speaker 1:All the new fintechs have come about.
Speaker 2:I mean, what you hear very often is you know, I was buying a house and I thought, oh, I'll go and look at an Islamic mortgage and I literally couldn't afford to buy the house. So there was just no way of. You know, I know some people are like then I won't buy the house, right. I know some people are like then I won't buy the house, right, I'll just wait until I can do it Some.
Speaker 1:But I think there's people a few and far between yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, gosh. So how are I have so many questions? Okay, so, for a high net worth Muslim, how do we attract them? What are they looking for, and how can people listening think, okay, if I want to invest like a high net worth muslim, what? Should I be investing in, because it sounds like they're just going for property way too often they're just going for property.
Speaker 2:Um, okay, first thing I'll say is right, um, muslim consumers, whether they're high net worth or not, that they're not mugs, yeah, and so I think any offering like your offering seems to be doing this. Um, and I'm not just saying that because you're my, the other host today, but yes, you say that to every podcast you come on um. You know you have to be at like monzo revolute starting policy right of course that's a given, um otherwise just don't bother yeah, you know the days of kind of like.
Speaker 2:Well, we accept all these shortcomings because we're doing it for such a pious reason it just does not wash no, not at all. For for maybe one reason in particular right, you're just massively shrinking your market size, so you're just never going to take off. Anyway, you're appealing to a very niche pool of people that are like you can't rely on where sharia.
Speaker 1:I will wear that hair shirt. Wear Sharia, so come, yeah, yeah, that doesn't fly anymore, so that's kind of first thing.
Speaker 2:And they you know from what I hear they often say look, we want it to be competitive in terms of rates, returns and so on and so forth. But then they also say, oh, I'm not sure I believe it's really Sharia compliant. So there has to be some way of my opinion is you solve that with service?
Speaker 1:I think yeah, I fully believe that. I think I really think this debate as to whether things are really sharia compliance or not I've said this on many episodes so I'm sorry if people are just sick of hearing it if you bring the service levels up to the levels of a revolute and you bring the costs down so it's at least on par with conventional, then the idea, idea of is this Sharia compliant? How Islamic is Islamic finance? Those questions go away from 95% of people. There's always going to be that 5% of oh, is it really Islamic? Let me look at that. But usually the first question people ask is how expensive is it? Oh, it's two times, three times more expensive than conventional. Then they start looking okay, let me find a fatwa which says it's okay for me to go for that Right and then there's skepticism.
Speaker 2:naturally, we're all human beings right. The skepticism naturally rises.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 2:Oh, here's a really sharia, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I do believe this. I think if you look at the Islamic banks in this country, how many of them are run by Muslims? I don't think any. Of course, if you look at it like a shareholder level, maybe they're funded by Qatar or Kuwait. So immediately you're thinking why is this person running this company? It's not because they really believe in this. They don't believe in the Sharia as like a better way of living your life and ordained by God, and this is something that's come from the Quran and the Hadith and from Fiqh. This is just for them.
Speaker 2:We're making money, but I actually don't have an issue with that, personally speaking. Right, yeah, I would want the best um financial services executives to run kestrel, right.
Speaker 2:I mean, at some point you're not going to be the right person to be running right yeah and I would want you to go and find the best executive to run kestrel, absolutely, but irrespective of what their um, what their background is, that would be and there is, and there would be protocols and there would be governance in place to ensure that its activities are in line with the Islamic value. Of course, that would be my preference.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't be so bothered about who is running it personally, speaking, I had this debate with someone the other day and it got very interesting and a little bit heated, but I just feel that right now I think it's because we're at a very I don't know early gestational period of islamic find we're not. It's been around for decades but it hasn't really taken off it feels early.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, I mean, it doesn't matter how many decades it's been, it just feels like.
Speaker 1:It just feels like we haven't come very far, the traction is not really there to show. Um, I think the people at the helm need to be people who really believe in it right now. And then, of course, absolutely If I do my job right, then I shouldn't be running this thing. If a child orchestral takes off, I shouldn't be running it. If it becomes like a small medium cap company there'll be floats or or something Then absolutely you should be the right person for the job.
Speaker 2:Right, gestational period. I think people should, people who really believe it. It's kind of like, okay, you need that kind of, you need that missionary zeal at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, if you were at the helm of deejay, do you think muslim women will? Be interested in hearing from you as opposed to yeah, I'm definitely not going to be at the helm of deejay yasmin is uh running that show for sure right
Speaker 2:um. But look, I I accept your point, but I do, I'm quite passionate about this. I think if we want um, islamic financial institutions and offerings to be, you know, kind of I don't know, maybe ghettoize this too strong a word but kind of just literally just catering to uh to us, then definitely you'd want to just only appoint like muslims all along the chain. But if we believe um, as I'm sure you do, that actually the, the principles underneath the way it's being built, are of benefit to all, of everybody, absolutely then it should make no difference to us who's running it the last episodes, or the one we filmed just before this with Sheikh Salman Hassan from FIDA.
Speaker 1:He put it really really beautifully, which was when Islam came it was being preached to non-Muslims because there were no.
Speaker 1:Muslims right so it is something that is for everyone and, if we do our jobs right, it should be a product that just makes sense to everyone and, of course, right, right, it should be a product that just makes sense to everyone and, of course, right now, it's just it's sharia. We can't really fully define why it's sharia and why it's different. So we've got a real job to do, but I think with people like deejay, kestrel, curates, fider, inshallah, all together we can. We can make that work?
Speaker 2:absolutely yeah, and you know, with deejay, there's no reason why the the approach that's being taken shouldn't appeal to you. Know, with DJ, there's no reason why the approach that's being taken shouldn't appeal to you know, anyone of any faith background. You know the principle is get everything the right way around, right, get the goals and understanding of the goals and real life problems sorted first, and have that first and foremost before you delve into the kind of technicalities of the. You know the financial details and that's how you actually get people engaged. That's how you get them going from zero to one.
Speaker 1:I've been asking this question for a few of our guests now, since we've announced we're launching this digital Islamic bank. What do you want to see in it? Do you have any advice for us? Any assets? Because we wanted to introduce gold. We wanted to introduce crypto investment. Of course, we're introducing a current account that pays a return. Is there anything you think we should be doing or shouldn't be doing?
Speaker 2:I think all of those, everything you've said is great, and I know that you're going to be somewhat constrained by what licenses you get along the way right. And the cost of implementing those.
Speaker 2:I would love it if um kestrel kind of broke out of the muslim community, basically yeah just stood alone as something that was just very attractive yeah the gap for me I know this just feels like total fantasy right now is what I said earlier in the in the recording, which is um just a massive increase in the variety and flavors of investment funds and asset, sorry sectors and geographies.
Speaker 1:Which are Sharia compliant.
Speaker 2:Which are Sharia compliant. That would be massive. How we get there, I don't know. It's quite tough because to launch funds is an expensive exercise. You need a minimum scale to get there.
Speaker 1:We're getting approached by quite a few fund managers who run small to mid-cap funds about getting Sharia certified in some way Nice.
Speaker 1:And their whole idea is could we attract and they're based in the UK could we attract investment from gata, from saudi, from the gcc or wealthy pakistanis or whoever they are into this country, because they're not seeing that kind of assets spread what in their local geographies? And it goes back to something muhammad paracha said, who's one of the co-founders of nesta and he also helped set up the first islamic banks in this country, and he said if we reframed islamic finance and we didn't call it islamic, but we pitched it at a governmental level, societal level- as foreign direct investment into this country.
Speaker 1:It could be such a powerful tool because you're doing it from london, which is one of the financial capitals of the world, and you're just happening to make something sharia compliant in the background you bring in all of of this funding from. I mean, it's already happening, right. Malaysia funded all of the Battersea power station renovation. Qatar owns like half of London already, but we do the same for the small to mid cap stocks and funds. Rather, that could be really powerful.
Speaker 2:It would be. It would be amazing. I mean, how much do they care about their investments being Sharia compliant, though? That's quite a blunt question. Those pools of capital right, they're busy investing in private credit funds and all sorts right, so are they bothered?
Speaker 2:however, I love the idea and something I've thought about a lot okay, what is needed potentially, is not for us to go and create like mini, like islamic versions of all these funds that are out there that I mentioned, like a kind of UK small cap value fund, right, but just take an existing one, apply a screen and be able to access a, whether it's a different share class or you know just a subsidiary or you know a sub fund that has screened out.
Speaker 1:So exactly the same strategy, it's just screened out the pubs, and would it replace them with something Potentially Potentially, or it depends on the manager, right, but the manager.
Speaker 2:So the simplest model, like you're describing, would be the manager doesn't do anything different. They just have a sub fund which has screened out Very interesting, you know the pub, or?
Speaker 1:whatever it is right, or the gambling company, and then you know the pub or whatever it is right, or the gambling company, and then you've just got and maybe we balanced it a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got 38 stocks instead of 45, so right, gotcha, and then you can say that's certified, true compliant. Very cool, that would be a nice, um nice solution to a lot of what we've been talking about today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, amazing. All right, um, we're almost out of time. Um, so do you have any parting advice to our audience about how they should be interacting with their money?
Speaker 2:Definitely I would reiterate, okay, the starting point. Like everyone gets caught up in, everyone wants to make money quickly. Yeah. Okay, it's completely understandable, it's human nature, okay, but you know, if you're a Muslim, you believe that whatever you're going to make is written for you.
Speaker 1:It's already written. Right.
Speaker 2:So I would just go back to you know sound principles and this applies whether you're super wealthy or not, right is? You take care of the most immediate concerns first. You make sure that your kind of reserves are there. If they're not just do everything you can to build those up. Your kind of reserves are there If they're not just do everything you can to build those up and then, beyond that, educate yourself. I mean, there are so many tools out there now. I think you interviewed the Nispa guys recently.
Speaker 2:That's right. You know, dj's doing incredible stuff, yasmin's doing stuff, putting stuff out like daily. As far, as. I can tell I just constantly on my LinkedIn feed with another thing, right, I don't know if you know um ali zaffer. I do know ali zaffer, okay, I mean yeah what the way he's engaging youngsters you know of all faiths it's just like mind blowing.
Speaker 2:I don't know if he's in some of the videos that he's recorded I mean just incredible and, you know, hopefully he's kind of getting to a point where you can package that up somehow and get it out there more. There's loads and loads and loads of resources to get informed about the basics of sound financial management. So I would say invest the time, first and foremost. If you're at the higher end of the wealth spectrum and I'm going to say this because I'm a financial advisor obviously right, but you know we pay. I was speaking to someone earlier today who was saying you know, I don't use financial advisors, I do everything myself. But when it came to inheritance tax, obviously I paid somebody to help me with that. And I'm like, well, what's the difference? Like, why are you happy to pay for that?
Speaker 2:And you know you'll pay a solicitor to help with your property transactions but, you're not going to pay a financial advisor for helping you to construct a decent financial plan that works for you. So yeah that's what I would say.
Speaker 1:Fantastic If someone wanted to reach out to you. How can they do that?
Speaker 2:The most obvious place is on on linkedin um.
Speaker 1:My website is currently under reconstruction, um okay that's another story, but go on linkedin for now and before we end. It was this your first appearance on a podcast.
Speaker 2:Um, okay, so this is my first appearance on podcast. Okay, um, but it's my. It's actually my third appearance on media, so my first, uh, so my second appearance media was um, I used to work at tesco for nine years tesco bank, uh, tesco bank, right at the very end. Okay, but I was in like tesco. Tesco is like this amazing organization where you can literally just have a 40-year career yeah and do loads of different things and just be very happy.
Speaker 2:So I was there nine years, but I was involved in the creation of the Tesco Asian Network and they secured us a…. Tesco Asian Network, yes, yeah. Wow, I mean terrible acronym, if you think about it.
Speaker 1:TAN yeah, which I'm sure they all were, or most of them were.
Speaker 2:But anyway, and they secured us um the company, the media team secured us a slot uh interview slot, okay to launch it, but it was on like channel 9052 on sky like it was like absolutely way down. I can't actually remember what, what the channel was, it's like a b4u or something like that. Right, and uh, it was the most cringe worthy interview ever.
Speaker 1:Anyway, that was one appearance we'll have to find that, but I'm gonna see if you can track that down and put that in the episode and then burn it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but before that was um, I think it was uh 17, so um blockbusters came and did auditions at my school and I got onto it, yeah you won't remember. You're much younger than me. Blockbusters, the quiz show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with bob holness. Oh, I thought you meant the, the video. No, no, no, no, no, it was a tv quiz show. Yeah, with bob holness. Oh, I thought you meant the video. No, no, no, no, no, it was a tv quiz show for youngsters for teenagers, right okay and so so I was on that um when I was 17.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you have? Footage of that um. My sister has a videotape if you can send us, like a picture or something yeah, the annoying thing is um, all of the episodes, starting from, I think, the one or two after mine, are available on YouTube.
Speaker 1:Oh, but not yours, Mine isn't but I'll sort it out. We'll find it Fair. So we're completely out of time, but I'm glad we got that anecdote in. As-salamu alaykum, Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2:Wa-salamu alaykum, thank you.
Speaker 1: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 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.