Muslim Money Talk
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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?'.
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Muslim Money Talk
The Swedish Revert: Discovering Islam & Islamic Finance | MMT Ep 59 - Pontus Selander
In this episode of Muslim Money Talk, Pontus Selander shares his journey from atheist stockbroker-in-training in Sweden to embracing Islam and becoming a leader in Islamic finance with Saturna Capital. He and host Areeb Siddiqui dive into halal investing, ESG, the challenges of Islamic wealth management, and how Muslims can start investing responsibly, even with small amounts.
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
06:20 – Pontus’ upbringing in Sweden, father’s death, early reflections on God.
13:00 – University debates with Muslim friends, prejudice, and first real exposure to Islam.
18:00 – Journey to Shahada, struggles with prayer and alcohol, finding meaning.
27:00 – Family and community reactions, first Eid experience, challenges as a revert.
32:30 – Career in finance, haram investments, dua for change, move into renewables.
39:00 – Marriage, leaving lucrative but haram opportunities, focus on halal income.
50:00 – Challenges in Islamic investing: lack of diversity, Sukuk, BDS concerns.
59:00 – Active vs passive investing, Saturna’s approach to screening & ESG.
10:06:00 – Growth of Islamic investing in UK & Sweden, importance of education.
01:10:00 – Future of Saturna & Kestrel, advice for Muslim fintech and investors.
I went to the Grand Mosque in Stockholm for the first time. I was f***ed. I thought, oh my God, what are they going to do with me? You know, what do you think was going to happen? I don't know. You know, prejudice Crazy. I had a book. I wrote down you know everything, All the questions I had, but alcohol, for example. Ah, okay, were you a big drinker yeah, I used to be a bartender man you know like yeah, alternatives for a halal investing?
Speaker 1:there's nothing. Okay, we have one one alternative now, and that's our etf that's all that exists.
Speaker 3:That's all that, really, and there's been this argument for a long time. Active has never beaten a passive fund, so what's your take?
Speaker 1:on that I disagree. When I started last year, I think we've grown by 400 percent. Wow in investors. Because, as you said, I think most people they think if I'm gonna invest, it sounds so big, start with 50 pounds. Do 50 pounds a month. For me, esg is Islamic. You were in the wind farms, yeah saving the world from global warming and polluting. It's really the Surah Al-Kawthar or any Surah. It's there.
Speaker 3:We're guardians of this planet, Exactly exactly For me.
Speaker 1:I think all the Islamic funds should be ESG. I think all the Islamic funds should be ISG.
Speaker 3: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 Pontus Salander, who leads the European arm of global wealth manager Saturna Capital, who are offering Sharia-compliant funds globally, from the US, europe all the way to Malaysia and even right here in the UK. We're going to be talking through his very interesting journey, about how he discovered both Islam and then Islamic finance, and how he took his experience in banking and investment services and applied it to his newly found way of life. So, without further ado, I'm your host, areeb Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk Fonces. Assalamu alaikum, welcome to the show, Wa alaikum assalam, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:No, no, I have to thank you, and thank you for your very nice gift.
Speaker 1:The Swedish fika. I've never had a Swedish gift. You can't be weird as fika.
Speaker 3:What does fika mean? Fika?
Speaker 1:is. It's a very Swedish word. Fika is a very Swedish word. Fika, you can say if you say you want to go for a coffee, yeah, you say, should we?
Speaker 2:have a fika in Swedish.
Speaker 1:A fika could be. It's usually involved something to drink, something to eat Okay, biscuits, or cinema buns.
Speaker 3:Okay, over a snack. Swedish cinema buns. That's very nice. Should we crack these open during the conversation? Yeah, if you want to Go ahead, go ahead. I'm a little bit hungry.
Speaker 1:I thought I'd bring something Swedish, at least today. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Beside myself, and yeah, we should talk about that, because of course, you hail from Sweden. You're here visiting. What brings you to the UK?
Speaker 1:I was at the IFn uk forum yesterday, yesterday, islamic finance conference yes, yeah please, I'm trying to oh, look at that I'm trying to get into. Um, well, first of all, uh, it was a turner capital. We, uh I joined last year, uh, the European consultant for them. So we're working. So we have our ETF, the Saturn Al-Kawthar ETF, listed on the London Stock Exchange in British pounds and US dollars, and we're also listed in Germany.
Speaker 3:Oh, really In Frankfurt. Yeah, okay, and so on. And Saturn has been going for a couple of decades now, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, since 1986, actually 1986. The first fund, the Amarna Income Fund, was actually founded in 1986.
Speaker 2:Wow Okay.
Speaker 1:And managed by Saturna. Is the founder Muslim. Founder of Saturna Capital is not Muslim. No, nick Kaiser, his name is Okay, but he was approached in 1986 because he was a wealth manager, you know, specializing in stocks and also in ethical investments, which was very early for 1986. And he was approached by Dr Mills a few muslims, uh, they came together, they wanted to do uh um sharia sharia compliant fund, because there weren't really any at the time in europe in us.
Speaker 3:Oh, this was in the us. Yeah, this is in the us, so it's when capital started in the us in the us?
Speaker 1:yes, in bellingham, washington, wow state. Wow so the muslim population in the US? In the US, yes, okay, fine.
Speaker 3:In Bellingham, washington State, wow so the Muslim population in the US, even though they were relatively small, especially in the 80s. Couldn't it be more than a couple million? Two, three million people? Yeah, maybe, but still they had the wherewithal to actually think okay, let's set up this, yeah, and the wealth for it, yeah, Definitely.
Speaker 1:For sure. Set up, yeah, and the wealth for it? Yeah, definitely for sure. So this dr morozo sets up the amana fund, does it? Yeah, together, together when, and it was helped by nick kaiser then and nick kaiser started saturn capital in 1989, okay, and kind of incorporated. So we've been managing the, the fund, since then.
Speaker 3:Wow, okay, yeah, very cool I want to get into all of it about how you came to saturn and do that. Yeah, yeah, you keep, you go for it. It's always funny when the guest has a drink or some food and I feel like you guys are talking the whole time. You don't get to partake in anything, I leave the biscuit there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I want to get into all of it, but first you have a born into a Muslim household, you're a revert to the religion, so it's always so interesting because there are many non-Muslims who work in Islamic finance, but very few of them actually became Muslim in a way. So I'd love to hear your story. You've told me a little bit about it, yeah, but I would love to know a bit more. How did you discover Islam in Sweden, of of all places?
Speaker 1:in sweden, of all places. Yeah, that's, it's a very strange story and I, every time I get the answer, the question I, I have to kind of ponder on how did it start? Because I was not religious, I, we, my family wasn't religious. My grandmother was actually a devout christian, oh really. But uh, our family was not. And now I would say I was an atheist, I didn't believe in god. But also I would say and this is quite funny they, they done, um, uh. So if you, if you would ask me do you believe in god? No, I would say, but I believe in something really yeah, and this is very common in scandinavia.
Speaker 2:This is especially sweden.
Speaker 1:I think I read somewhere they did um a survey on this that Swedish people are the least believers in a religion, but very um, what would you say, spiritual the spiritual people, yeah, so if you, if I would ask a friend you know non-religious friend in Sweden, like you believe in god? No, but I believe in something there's something, something yeah, that's god, isn't it gosh? At least yeah, for me where does that come from?
Speaker 3:why are the swedish people so spiritual? Does it go back to the viking times? Yeah, maybe and then you guys are but there's so much nature as well in sweden, so, yeah, yeah, something to do with it's very no, I think.
Speaker 1:I mean you have all the folklore and everything about. You know goblins and like Trolls Anywhere else, yeah, trolls. But I don't know, but for me I kind of go back when my father became sick in cancer when I was 14, turning 15.
Speaker 1:Right, and he was sick for a few years and I just kind of pushed it away. I didn't, you know, it's going to be fine, it's going to be fine. And when he finally died, I was there with him by his side in a hospital in Stockholm. I was there with him by his side in a hospital in Stockholm. And, you know, when he died, everything just burst. Okay so, and I realized he's not going to make it. That's when I realized. So I ran out of the hospital, I ran under the freeway. There's a park right next to the hospital there in Stockholm called Karolinska Institutet, and there I was on a small mountain, like in the park, and I was shouting. You know why did you do this? Atheist? Who am I shouting at so kind of? I think this is kind of where something started. I wasn't looking for anything at the time. I was 17. I was just about to turn 18. But I started thinking about death. What's going to happen? Sure, you know, is there anything? I was having questions, you know about it.
Speaker 3:So that was almost the beginning of your journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think that's where I have to start. And then, but nothing really happened. I, you know, I worked a few years. I started university. I was going to become. I worked a few years. I started university. I was going to become. I was studying business. I was kind of the richest stockbroker in the world. That was your ambition. Yeah, that was my ambition. Money was everything for me. Where did that come?
Speaker 3:from.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know. I didn't come from an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:No, what did your parents do?
Speaker 1:My father was CFO for a government-owned company. My mom was a nurse x-ray nurse so I didn't really have anything with me. I just, I don't know, I thought money was cool.
Speaker 3:Money for the sake of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but after two years into university, I went traveling. I went backpacking with a friend, okay, and we went around Asia Thailand, indonesia, malaysia, nepal, australia and so on. So I was away for nine and a half months. Had you ever traveled before? Not like that? No. So that was an extremely good experience for me, wow, and especially because I saw poverty for the first time in my life in real life. You know, when you see stuff on tv, you don't, you can't really connect. I mean it's, it's sad, it's horrible, but it's like your brain doesn't really understand it until you actually see it in real life.
Speaker 1:So I came back from from that trip and I was thinking, maybe, well, money is not that important, maybe I'll work for save the children or, you know, charity, really so it changed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it changed completely. Yeah, you thought you go full into charity yeah, not full, but I it, I had.
Speaker 1:Um, I had a, so it's kind of a transition of me I I consider myself quite egoistic okay before.
Speaker 1:so, and uh, I think that trip did something with me. That a journey it was a journey really. And um, I decided when I finished university, when everyone else got a job, uh, I went to South America instead for six months with the ambition to work for like a charity, like orphans. So, and after that and during my time in university, I met a lot of I had some Muslim friends, you know, and one of them was a girl, and we had a lot of conversations about religion and I was very negative Really. Yeah, I was like I have so much prejudice against religion. It's all wars, you know, in Islam and this is even before 9-11.
Speaker 3:yeah, you're talking about this, so this is 99, 98, 99, and um how many? Very prejudiced there were muslims in your universe. How many were there in sweden?
Speaker 1:I can't remember at the time. I think nowadays we're around 10 10 of the population. Okay, so out of 10.7 million in sweden we are roughly around 1 million.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, okay, are they mainly um? Where did they come from?
Speaker 1:they came from, I think, early. The early muslims were turks. They came in the 60s, uh, you know, since sweden. Now we joined the world war II we didn't have anything to build. We built, you know, in Europe. Yeah, so Swedish companies were, you know, shipping, steel and construction, and the industry was booming in Sweden. So a lot of people came from former Yugoslavia, from Turkey North.
Speaker 3:Africa to work in the industry and their kids went to universities, and that's who you met.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it was quite a small population. I think the most of the Muslim population refugees Somalia, eritrea, bosnia during the 90s Somalia.
Speaker 3:Eritrea, bosnia during the 90s. Obviously Syrians, iraqis, some Iranians as well, but this girl that you used to debate, religion with.
Speaker 1:Was it just like a fun thing for you to do or were you genuinely curious? No, the thing is what happened there. We kind of split parts. The thing is what happened there. We kind of split parts. I went to Stockholm, I finished university and she came back in because I was running a company in Stockholm in 2003. And she showed up Okay, after four years. From nowhere Because she's been in the US to study Fun and she says should we have a fika?
Speaker 3:I say yeah, why not, you know?
Speaker 1:I was quite baffled. How do you know? How did you find me? No, so we sat there in a coffee shop in Stockholm, had a fika up in in stockholm, harapika, and uh, it came over me. That you know, I I felt really ashamed, uh, that you know how I treated her. So I said you know, I'm sorry about what's what I said, about islam and everything. And I said, uh, you know what I didn't, it was all prejudice. I don't know anything about Islam, so I'm going to borrow a book.
Speaker 1:So yeah all right, said and done. I borrowed a few books from a friend. I studied religion in university and I found this. You know what I read about God, allah, in Islam? That that's something we can't see, we can't feel, we can't understand, and it's huge, it's too big for us, for our mentality to understand. So that's where I thought, oh, this is the. I don't believe in God, but I believe in something, because God, I think this, I'm coming back to this. I think for many people, because of at least for me, because of growing up in a Christian society, you go to church, you see Jesus on a cross, you see paintings with a man on the cloud, of course, god, god is a man, yeah, and I think this is the problem for Swedish people they don't believe God is a man, okay, so that's why you say God, I don't believe in God, but I believe in something. So this is what kind of sparked my interest in Islam.
Speaker 3:And that until you researched it, you kind of thought, oh, that's probably how most religions yeah yeah, some sort of man.
Speaker 1:Exactly Interesting. Yeah, that's, and did you study any other?
Speaker 3:religions.
Speaker 1:I did. Yeah, I read a bit about Buddhism. Yeah, yeah, I read a bit about Buddhism and yeah something. Christianity? No, not really, it wasn't. For me, this man thing was the problem.
Speaker 3:How did your family react?
Speaker 1:This January 2003, we have a.
Speaker 1:FICA, and it took a while. I borrowed a few books. I went to the Grand Mosque in Stockholm for the first time. I was shitting it. I thought, oh my God, what are they going to do with me? What do you think was going to happen? I don't know. You know, prejudice crazy. What's going to happen to to me? He's like oh, I went in and everyone was super friendly, oh, welcome, and so I bought a few books there and I got some.
Speaker 1:I got some contacts From this girl's relatives, actually Like a phone number To phone some Muslims, some Alims, to ask questions. And I had a friend of mine. I became a very good friend of mine. He studied in Yemen and in Tarim and he was very knowledgeable. So I used to call him up. I had a book I wrote down you know everything, all the questions I had hijab, sharia, whatever anything I could come up with and I phoned him and I asked him okay, why is it like this? It could be quite harsh sometimes, unfortunately, but so why like this? And he gave me an answer I didn't. Sometimes I like okay, makes sense, and but a lot of times like no, I don't like that. They're very stubborn very stubborn.
Speaker 1:Your response was I don't like yeah, you just didn't like the answer. Can you give me an example?
Speaker 3:no to what can you give an example?
Speaker 1:ah.
Speaker 3:Was it the hijab one or praying five times a day?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I couldn't understand it. I couldn't some things. I could not understand and I just the first thing that came to mind. I don't like this. Okay, I don't understand it. I don't like it. So yeah, I was just very stubborn, but usually I put alcohol, for example.
Speaker 3:Ah, okay, were you a big drinker before?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I used to be a bartender man you know like yeah, messing about, you know, and I thought you know I can have a glass of wine or a beer, it doesn't hurt. But then I thought, thought you know, okay, if you look at it from a bigger perspective this is this was how I thought about it I mean, if you look at how much damage alcohol and drugs does to this society.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And how much it costs in life, in money, in broken families, broken life. Then I started to think okay, maybe it's out of solidarity. Even if I can handle a glass of wine on a Friday, maybe my neighbor will beat his wife up and kids because he gets drunk. Okay, so I keep away from alcohol because he does. That was your way of reasoning.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I kind of okay, this is so. That's why I started understanding that Islam is for the whole society. Exactly, we're all linked, you know. We're all helping each other.
Speaker 3: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 1,000 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 3: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. It's so interesting you say that because in two episodes before this, we interviewed Sheikh Salman from FIDA who is the head of legal and the sharia scholar?
Speaker 3:yeah and it became a conversation which we weren't really expecting. We thought we were going to be talking about home financing, but it became like you know, this is his framework for sharia and how he thinks about it now, and we talked about this point and he mentioned something that for a lot of new muslims, they get caught up in the details about. You know, pray five times a day. You can't drink. No fornication, this kind of thing. When you know his advice to new Muslims is like don't worry about all that stuff, Just believe, like that's the main thing you need to do and everything else will come. And he made a very good point, which is for the first Muslims, they weren't immediately told stop drinking.
Speaker 1:No, exactly.
Speaker 2:Stop committing Zina.
Speaker 3:It came later, right, the message was what came first and then it was slowly phased out, right. There's like three, three specific revelations about alcohol that came, saying it's not good for you and then stop drinking it when you're praying and then eventually stop drinking. It's because people would have rejected it exactly. They just got gotten caught up in the rules that you need to be praying five times a day from would be like. What's this?
Speaker 2:this is like so many right Was that daunting for you the prayer part?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Really.
Speaker 1:I was very stubborn there as well. I thought five is too much, I'll do two. Okay, fajr Isha.
Speaker 3:You chose Fajr yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know, when I finally did Shahada, it took me 11 months and I kind of felt, you know, always, like even that summer, I felt that I was drawn towards it. But I did Shahada in November in 2003, during Ramadan, wow, and it was easy. You know, fajr was very late anyway.
Speaker 3:Do you live in a place where it's dark all the time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, in Sweden, in the far north of Sweden, you have, I mean, between December and, I think, 5th of December and 5th of January, the sun doesn't it never?
Speaker 3:rises.
Speaker 1:No, so you have like a Maghrib Forever.
Speaker 2:Born on Maghrib all day, you know.
Speaker 1:So you just I don't know what you do with prayers.
Speaker 3:I guess they follow the next closer city. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's quite funny. We actually visited Kira Night's Call december this year. Oh, yeah, yeah, with with some people from from uk, from muslim uk oh really, yeah, okay so they came there and it's like where, where's the sun, you know? Crazy how do we pray? Uh, we visited a mosque there, so there's a mosque, yeah well, there's a mosque it's the, the furthest, the most northerly mosque.
Speaker 1:In Sweden at least. I think, Norway actually have, because Norway comes on top of Sweden. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think they have the most northern mosque Subhanallah that's crazy. It was dawn.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:The whole. You know the pink, nice pink color on the sky.
Speaker 3:So yeah, Wow, subhanallah, alhamdulillah. Do you guys get polar bears? Huh, do you get polar bears?
Speaker 1:No, not in Sweden.
Speaker 3:Not in Sweden, norway In Norway, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, norway, lofoten, and that They'll get polar bears. We had brown bears.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, nice, there's enough.
Speaker 2:so yeah, yeah brown bears and reindeers and moose that's what you get in Sweden.
Speaker 1:I'll have to go one day yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd love to anytime. No. So the prayer was I did, you started with the two. I started with the two, okay, and then I decided after a couple of months that I said, okay, I'm gonna do three. Yeah, that's it. And I think I did three for two days and then I thought, all right, pont de Salande, what are you doing? You're so stubborn, just drop this. If you can do three, you can do five. So I did five then.
Speaker 2:Incredible.
Speaker 1:And Alhamdulillah I had to backtrack those prayer I missed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what a journey? Yeah, alhamdulillah.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, I mean, it is a journey, isn't it Islam? You learn new things. You have to constantly work on yourself, your nafs, your yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 3:You know how you treat people did you ever get back in touch with that girl and does she know that she's responsible for?
Speaker 1:you yeah, yeah, yeah, no, she knows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm I thought the story was gonna end, and then with you saying oh, and then we got got married.
Speaker 3:No, no, we didn't, no, we didn't.
Speaker 1:I'm very good friends with the brother actually.
Speaker 3:Oh nice.
Speaker 1:Okay, very nice family, alhamdulillah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I wish them all the best.
Speaker 1:Amazing Wish, jenna for them, all of them. Good, I mean. They opened the door for me to Islam, so that's I mean, couldn it be anything better? How did your family react.
Speaker 3:Did you have siblings or your mother?
Speaker 1:No, I was the only child actually, so my mother was, I think, a bit scared because also prejudice, of course.
Speaker 3:She was fresh out of 9-11. Yeah, and she grew up with.
Speaker 1:You know, the evangelical Christian you know in the far north. It was quite harsh at the time when she grew up. So it was like anything you did, okay, you're going to hell. You know, if you grow up in that environment, you know it's just oh you're going to have a bad impression about religion.
Speaker 1:But I think, you know, I took her to mosque a few times in the beginning and, you know, just to ease her up, you know to, you know, like Muslims are not dangerous. You know, like when I came to mosque first time, like oh, what's going to happen? They've been pretty accepting your family yeah good, maybe a few older ones in the north that maybe had some issues with it.
Speaker 3:Okay you don't seem to care too much no, no. I don't care.
Speaker 1:I've never been anyone that cared too much what people think okay nice, so I tried to yeah how was I think it? Changed. I hope it changed me to a better person. I don't know, I hope so. Yeah, I'm still struggling, you know?
Speaker 3:yeah, everyone is did you, um, how was the experience being a revert? Because I've heard some crazy stories of like reverts in their early days saying, you know, they felt they didn't really have a community or their family left them, and then they're sort of yeah, doing this, this journey, suddenly alone, you know unfortunately, there are probably cases like that, yes and uh, and if you are, if you're a shy person or you know you don't reach out like I do.
Speaker 1:I just grab people and you know, start talking to them and you know, if you're extrovert, you know you're going to get invited. If you're introvert, you might not be. So that's something, I think, for the community to keep an eye out and actually involve and invite. And I remember the first. This is I mean, there's so many tests, it's amazing from Allah the first. So I, I did Shahada in Ramadan, november. So first Eid was my first Eid was in December, right, eid al-Fitr, and I went to mosque, grand mosque, for Eid was my first day was in December, right, either fitter, and I went to mosque, grand mosque, for Eid prayer. Wow, nice, oh, so many. So I, I saw all the Muslims, I just loved the. You know people from Africa, from Asia, from Middle East, from Sweden, just I, I just love the mixture of people.
Speaker 1:I just loved it. And it was December so it was cold, so I had my big fat polar jacket Very expensive.
Speaker 3:I hang it on the back of the road at the mosque and after Eid prayer it was gone.
Speaker 1:That was my first experience as a new Muslim at Eid prayer and I was like all right, this is a test. Are you going to be mad about losing money or are you going to be just alhamdulillah? Okay, so I thought this is a test, but what happened was when the the people in the masjid was hearing about this, because I asked if you have you seen this jacket? They were just you know, Furious, yeah, oh, what happened?
Speaker 1:And you know. So all of these nice things happened, you know, because it was like minus 10 outside and I was like so one of the taxi drivers took me home and invited me for dinner with his family, and you know so all these good things, yeah, came out of losing this jacket and you're not reacting badly because, like someone might have just been like oh you know, screw this yeah, I'm leaving.
Speaker 1:I'm leaving this religion yeah, you know I I can't, maybe maybe maybe someone needed it, you know. Yeah, you know I can't judge, I don't know. That's a really good way of thinking about it so okay. I think that's how we need to think. And losing money, yeah. So there are people getting bombed, yeah people without you know what's a jacket you know, that's a good way of thinking about it it was minus 10 degrees outside, so
Speaker 3:I think you did need a jacket, though, so that was something so of course I I want to come on to saturn as well yeah sure, because you were working in financial services yeah, as well, I was co-founding, co-funding a financial advisory. Okay, so you're doing financial advice yeah, okay, you were running that and then how did? Suddenly you became muslim. How did that? Did you know about islamic finance?
Speaker 1:I did uh.
Speaker 1:I became muslim in 2003 and I co-founded this company in 2005 oh, afterwards, yes, I was actually yeah, yeah, I was Muslim when I co-founded, okay, and maybe that's the entrepreneurial side of me, that I love trying new things. You know, give me a goal and an obstacle and I'll go for it. You know so. And it was a friend from the north as well, from university, because he was in finance and and I was running another company at the time in telecoms, but, but he wanted me to join and I said yeah, okay, let's go you know, and what were you?
Speaker 3:chief operating officer?
Speaker 1:we're gonna make so much money. He said okay, let's go. The money came back. You. And what were you, chief operating officer? We're going to make so much money? He said okay, let's go. The money came back. You know, like, all right, and I thought about it before, like, because I didn't know. I know, okay, RIBA, you know interest, we can't work with that.
Speaker 3:But we're doing mutual funds mostly.
Speaker 1:So it's mainly investing into companies and equity as opposed to debt-based instruments mutual funds, really yeah yeah, so helping you know companies and you know company owners, high net worth individuals uh, pension planning and all of that sure, sure sure, but after a few years we started working with structured products, and that was the big thing then in 2005, 2006, 7 of course in the run up to
Speaker 1:the global, yeah, exactly so, and I mean, if everyone doesn't know what a structured product is actually a bond and options, so both are haram. It's actually a bond and options, so both are haram. It's like a hundred percent haram thing, right. And that's when I started thinking about what am I doing? You know, this is not good. And I also got married. I met my wife in actually here in London in 2007.
Speaker 3:Oh, your wife's from the UK? Yeah, she's from Blackburn, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah lovely. Blackburn.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing. Blackburn groaned on me. First time I went to Blackburn I was like, oh God, you know what is this, but it's actually a lovely town. No, but it's actually is is a lovely, it's a lovely town no, it's okay, it is because the surroundings is, you're in the countryside, but there's there's this town in there. You know, I don't know how many mosques there are in blackburn there's a lot it's crazy good food and and all of that so her family's all still there.
Speaker 1:You go there, yeah, yeah I have the best, best family okay, from stockholm to best wife, best family, best kids. They're doing my head in I'm doing my wife's head head in, so I don't know good but so you met your wife.
Speaker 3:You got her married, yeah, and suddenly you found your company was leading you towards these ribba based products yeah, and then I started.
Speaker 1:I got book I can't remember the name, but it is An Introduction to Islamic Finance, okay and I started reading and I thought you know this is because at the time, when I was in London in 2007, I was actually there to meet a friend from Sweden who moved to London and he's also been in finance, so we were actually thinking about doing some pension advisory for Muslims. But the thing is, at the time in Sweden in 2007, we didn't have any alternatives for halal investing. There's nothing. We have one one alternative now, and that's our ETF.
Speaker 3:You can't access HSBC's funds Nothing or BlackRock's Nothing like that. Wahid's not in Sweden, no.
Speaker 2:I'd love them to come.
Speaker 1:I want to have everyone there.
Speaker 3:Most of them will be listening, hopefully, alhamdulillah, because it's not fair. I'd love them to come. Yeah, I want to have everyone there. Well, most of them will be listening, hopefully. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alhamdulillah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean because it's not fair. I mean, even though you know, obviously I work for Saturn. It's a good fund, but people need alternatives.
Speaker 1:You need the diversity, yeah, you need to be able to build a portfolio, sure, and at the time, so when, when we got married, started thinking because we, we tried to have kids, wouldn't happen, wouldn't happen, wouldn't happen. And then I I really started questioning. You know more and more what I was doing because even my sheikh said that. You know more and more what I was doing, because even my sheikh said that, make Nia, whatever comes in to the company, that's, your salary comes from halal sources. But I couldn't justify even that, because it was almost 100% haram all we did, and I made a dua in 2009 in that, because it was almost 100% haram all we did.
Speaker 1:So and I made a dua in 2009 that you know, allah, you know, take me out of this haram business and towards something halal and make me a tool for you to do good for others, for other Muslims. And so, and I think in December that year 2009,. Actually, a head of the company called me up and they were looking for a head of sales for a wind power company. Okay, so, like one or two months after that, the door opened, I got the job and I left my shares in the company. I didn't sell them. It wasn't a hard decision.
Speaker 2:It was very hard.
Speaker 1:Really, because when you make so much money, of course, but in the end, what is money, you know? Go back to that jacket at Eid. What is it, you know? If it's haram money, if my wife gets pregnant, you know, am I going to feed my kids with this haram money? You know, okay, I can buy them things. We can go on fancy holidays, we can have a beautiful house, but what is it? You know, okay, I can buy them things, we can go on fancy holidays, we can have a beautiful house, but what is it, you know? So, alhamdulillah, I got this job in May. I started in May 2010. And in, I think, october, september, october my wife got pregnant.
Speaker 3:Wow, so alhamdulillah. So you know, literally, you know as soon as my wife got pregnant, wow, so Alhamdulillah.
Speaker 1:So you know.
Speaker 3:Literally you know, as soon as you made that decision.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 3:And it's almost like Allah was waiting for your income to change.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that you could provide for the children from the Allah source Wow.
Speaker 1:So, even though I made maybe a fourth, 25% of what I did before, you know, still had a good life. Did you ever regret it? No, never Ever. No, wow. Sometimes I think, well, you know, I could have been a millionaire, you know, because that company went really good and a few years later he sold the company.
Speaker 2:So no disrespect to your friend, I could have been a millionaire but, you know, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It would have been haram money anyway.
Speaker 3:So no disrespect to your friend, but it would have been a little bit easier if it had all gone bad and the company blew up.
Speaker 1:It's fine, it wasn't it wasn't right.
Speaker 3:Did he take you aside? And was he just like what are you doing? Like why are you?
Speaker 1:leaving. Yeah, I think he he was scared at first that I was gonna leave and start a similar business yeah and take clients, that that he was really scared about that. But I, when I told him, no, I'm, I'm, I'm leaving everything. Okay, I'm not going to be in this business. I'm out the game, I'm going to work with wind power. You know investments.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's what I you know. So and and, and, after that it was, it was fine. You know, he was kind of relieved, did yeah, I was Muslim, yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone you know I was leading the telemarketing team and I worked as an advisor as well. Your story is reminding me of. We used to hang around here and we used to work for Royal Bank of Scotland.
Speaker 3:Oh, just here, you know, just here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:So I was here very often your story is reminding me of's from Nisbah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because, similarly, he worked in a company which was doing, you know, less than halal things Exactly A lot of very interest-based products, and then he wasn't very practicing for a Muslim household, but he wasn't that practicing, highly skeptical. And then, through meeting his founder watch the Nisbah episode if you've not seen it, because we go into all of this it and through meeting his founder, watch the Nisbara episode if you've not seen it, because we got into all of this, it was good fun, but through meeting his co-founder.
Speaker 3:He got very into religion and then left it all behind.
Speaker 1:Left it all behind to do what he's doing now.
Speaker 3:So he's at the beginning of that journey.
Speaker 1:You are now much further on. If you have that right knee, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And just yeah, I think we've all kind of gone. And just yeah, I think, I think we've all kind of gone. I mean with Kestrel I was working in Deloitte and PwC.
Speaker 2:I was a management consultant.
Speaker 1:Good Kestrel, Now I want to hear I was going to start asking you.
Speaker 2:You should have. You should have yeah.
Speaker 1:I love your concept and I.
Speaker 2:I met all of your nice colleagues.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I met all of your nice colleagues At Muslim Tech Fest. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Amazing people, thank you. So tell me. Let me tell you the story.
Speaker 3:I'm sure the viewers, regular listeners, are sick of it by now, but I'll just go through the story.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I graduated in physics. I did my undergrad degree in that. But, like most people who live in London, you have an idea that you're going to work in financial services, because that's the main way everyone makes money here. So I went to Deloitte. I was a consultant and then I moved to other consultancies like Alpha and PwC, working with wealth managers and banks, helping them to develop digital strategies for their own applications, whether it was launching their own digital bank or a robo-advisor, which was very popular in 2015, 2016. We worked on the strategy for Nutmeg and we helped big wealth managers like Invesco develop REIT strategies and things like that.
Speaker 3:But as time went on, I was like 24, 25, I got increasingly uncomfortable, just thinking, oh, I can't use this product. Just thinking, oh, I can't use this product and my family can't use this and people in my community can't use this and I'm not seeing like the alternative. And there was this idea of islamic finance. It was almost so romanticized in the community that, yeah, yeah, just get, just cut your teeth in conventional and then move into islamic finance. But when you looked, you couldn't really find anything. There were Islamic banks like Oryan and Gatehouse and a few others, but their services were quite poor from user experience, customer service, higher fees.
Speaker 3:So most people didn't use them. Either they had a poor impression of them or they didn't trust them at all. And the biggest kicker was a lot of people didn't even know they existed, especially when you went out of London. You know, I speak to my wife's relatives in Derby or Birmingham, places like that.
Speaker 3:A lot of them don't even know there were Islamic banks in this country or that we have them now. So I got really disenchanted with what I was doing and this moment came where I was. It was Ramadan 2016. I was working at the top of this like beautiful skyscraper. It was 11 pm at night and I was there with my whole team, just stuck, and I'd had to break my fast there and miss Tharawi and going there to the masjid because we were working late and I just thought this is a terrible existence right now, like it's meant to be the most spiritual time of the month, but I'm barely managing to find time to get out and pray, yeah, and you know, grab a quick bite to eat so I can break my fast. I thought I've got to do something else, so I took a year out and did an mba, because someone said that's the thing people do when you're trying to move careers or figure yourself out, yeah, so I applied.
Speaker 3:I got into cambridge and I didn't know what I was looking for. But two things happened. One I was introduced to real entrepreneurs for the first time. Cambridge different MBAs have their own skill sets and reasons for doing them. Cambridge is very good for entrepreneurship, so I met a lot of people who would come to the business school and they would pitch. There was a thing called Pitch and Judge where every Thursday, entrepreneurs would come and pitch to the local angels and high net worths for funding. So I got to sit and watch that and I thought, okay, that's interesting, but it could never be me. I'm in consulting, I'm just going to work for a big company and yeah but then I met my co-founder dying tramusi.
Speaker 3:So dying who, I think you met yeah from malaysia. Very nice, yes and he worked in islamic banking and there was a moment where we were going for lunch and I was paying for for food and dying was like, why aren't you using an islamic bank? He'd seen my blue barclays card. He said what, what are you doing, right? We pray five times a day. We would look for halal restaurants together um he's like but why aren't you doing that?
Speaker 3:and I had to explain like it was quite embarrassed I was like you know, there are some banks, but they're really poor, and I thought he was going to tell me off. And then he showed me this article which had just come out, which had the ceo of wahid junaid in the financial times. They had just announced that they were launching in the uk and they told the story about how, you know, we we don't have enough Islamic options for Muslims to invest in. There were these things called robo-advisors. Let's introduce a Sharia-compliant one of them. And then I thought maybe we could do that right. My own skill set and strategy in fintech dying in Islamic banking.
Speaker 3:I don't know what, but we could do something. So that began the journey. We did a nationwide survey. That was the first thing we did?
Speaker 3:We interviewed 3,000 people around the UK to see if there was demand. There was demand, but people were not going for Islamic products for these reasons Poor customer service, poor user experience, high fees and just an overall low trust in this industry. We started off thinking, oh, let's launch a digital bank, realized we weren't going to raise enough money to do that. So then we backtracked and made a budgeting tool, uh, which was going well, but it wasn't making any money. Yeah, so, uh, we came very close to failing. And then suddenly this large islamic bank in malaysia, the biggest islamic bank, bank, islam, reached out to us, um, and said look, can we white label your technology? Can we take your technology and apply it to our new digital bank? Because we're launching a new digital Islamic bank. And we said, yeah, okay, and we told our investors that was always the plan, but it wasn't the plan, right, we didn't know what was going on, but Allah sent us a lifeline at that time to survive.
Speaker 3:And you know, we started working with some of the biggest Islamic banks around the world who were looking to digitize and launch their own Islamic windows or apps in some way, and we would give them this technology to do that. And now what's happening, as you saw at Muslim Tech Fest, is a large bank from Malaysia is looking to enter the market. They have products, we have licenses. So they thought, can we use your license and your app? You launch a digital bank and we introduce these new features, these new products, in the UK. So we're starting off with this current account that pays a Sharia-compliant return. We'll introduce savings products. There's an ethical screener as well, so if you spend it at McDonald's, we can flag it and say by the way, did you know this is?
Speaker 1:I subscribed to it, by the way.
Speaker 3:Oh, nice yeah. A couple of months ago.
Speaker 1:I can't use it in Sweden, though Can't use it in Sweden yet, not yet, but we want to make it international. I'm following it, Sweden's in the EU.
Speaker 3:So if we get an EU license, it's pretty easy to go. Maybe you can help us launch in Sweden, Scandinavia.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. I'll introduce you.
Speaker 2:So that's the idea.
Speaker 3:I hesitate to say like a Monzo for Muslims or a Revolut for Muslims, but the idea is Sharia-compliant services, but the same service level that you've come to expect from a Revolut or a Monzo or these like best in show or fintechs. That's kind of what we're doing now, so we're still working with banks and wealth managers as well. That's like some nice revenue for us. But this was the dream. We want to help all these Muslims who live in the West to bank and grow their money without compromising on their beliefs, without feeling like, well, I have no other option or the options that exist are so bad that I can't use it. So, yeah, that's the journey we're headed on.
Speaker 1:So I can understand the feeling that you felt when it was like, okay, there's we just have saturnic capital, and there's nothing else here and also the feeling when you actually a door opens for you. Yeah, like it's done for you guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly right, alhamdulillah, and it's like I think the thing is there are many doors which are open for people yeah it's just you have to kind of write and be in the right frame of mind to see it yeah sometimes, sometimes, and have to go for it exactly like you say like the jacket, you're losing your jackets yeah you could have, you know, been very angry about that, being furious just for months yeah, why?
Speaker 1:why it's like that exactly.
Speaker 3:It's like this, exactly right, but instead it led you to getting closer to your community yeah, you know, so sub, so subhanAllah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's amazing. So I want to talk to you about the problems within the Islamic wealth management scene, because at IFN yesterday, the Islamic finance big conference that happens every year in London I was speaking with wealth managers from. There were two wealth managers I was talking to, one from Bruin Dolphin and one from Rathbent, and Bruin Dolphin has a product, but it's for high net worths. I think minimum investment $250,000. Or your net worth has to be that, and Rathbun doesn't have any.
Speaker 3:But they were basically lamenting and saying that, look, even if we were to create our own fund, the diversity of products is so small, small, especially when you're trying to balance a portfolio. So if you want to make something more conservative and less risky, you want to put some debt in there. But the amount of sharia compliant debt or sukuk yeah, that exists is quite small, especially if your fund is restricted to only investing in the uk. Yeah, I think. I think there's only like one or two uk domiciled so-called that exist. Um, so their point was we're all just going to end up building funds which are the same as each other in some way global equity fund.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a global equity fund.
Speaker 3:20 of which is like microsoft or something, and you know so. Have you recognized that problem yourselves at saturn, and do you see a?
Speaker 1:way I I actually had a conversation yesterday was about the same thing really. Yeah, the the difficulty about, you know, building portfolios with islamic products, products, uh and um, yeah, I think I could agree. Um, I think you only have one Sukuk. Yes, we have one in the US. We're looking to bring it over here as well, so maybe we can have two soon, inshallah. But I was sitting there yesterday thinking they're talking about they don't have enough alternatives. We have one alternative in Sweden. I was like you have all the alternatives in the world. But I understand I mean you would need maybe a commodity-based fund if you want to build a portfolio, want to build a portfolio? Um, I mean our, even though we're a global, we have a global mandate in in saturn al-khaltar. Um, we don't really. We're index agnostics. So we we tend to we look at 5 000 companies, doesn't care, we don't care about if they're, if they're in the index or not. You know.
Speaker 2:Oh, really yeah.
Speaker 1:So we do a screening every month of 5,000 companies Fine, and roughly maybe 2,000, over 2,000 comes out of Sharia compliant and out of those we do an ESG screening.
Speaker 3:Okay, so it's Sharia and ESG screening. Yeah, you do, that's really interesting. So that's where the oil companies.
Speaker 1:Yeah goes out the door, tesla goes out the door you know, um what about weapons developers?
Speaker 3:yeah, no, no weapons, really okay. So what about someone like palantir, for example, who is a big tech company, but they've also produced software which is being used in?
Speaker 2:yeah, in drones, I don't know. Okay, yeah, so it has to be a bit they should.
Speaker 1:They should go out in the sharia screening, isn't it?
Speaker 3:but that's the. That's the thing. When you look into a lot of you have microsoft as well, with the ar, exactly it's, it's all. Yeah, I mean that's the elephant in the room it's.
Speaker 1:It's hard, I hope. Uh, we've been talking about this. Uh, I spoke to. We did a tour in in in january. It was around the uk, yeah, with wahid and nester and and uh river free, so we actually talked about this. It should be, because we all get the bds questions.
Speaker 3:That's the elephant in the room yeah, it is okay you're sharia compliant, but is it boycott friendly as well?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know I think we're, we're moving towards that, hopefully. Uh, I think you have.
Speaker 3:You have this screening we have, uh, we have an ethical screen, hopefully, yeah but it will be good like if the big islamic standard like io3 yeah they make a stand on it, then it will be easier.
Speaker 3:We spoke to we spoke to someone on a on a recent episode about this and their take was that the standards actually account for it. Yeah, they do say that you're not meant to be investing into these unethical companies. It's just how it's applied and it hasn't been applied in that way before. So it's almost like the industry needs to move forward now yeah and just say like look, we need to just get rid of all of these different companies yeah the question then becomes like what is left? What is left?
Speaker 3:to invest yeah it's true, because if all of these guys are compromised. You can argue that facebook's compromised for pushing certain yeah, certain posts out. Microsoft compromised Google. If you lose all the fan companies, you lose the big tech companies. So much of the Sharia funds are US tech.
Speaker 1:It is. It is yeah, Because you tend to go for the large, the value companies, yeah. So what do we replace them?
Speaker 3:with Is the answer, like small caps and mid caps, I think we should.
Speaker 1:We should look into small cap, uh, maybe developing where we in in the states we have. We have four funds. We have the amana income fund, which is very value-based, we have the growth fund, we have developing world and the participation fund, which isK Okay. So maybe something like that also here to look at more developing countries, small cap commodities. Before I joined Saturn, I was actually back in my higher-end finance for two years, working for an investment company.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And we invested in real estate commodities, equities, unfortunately, bonds, because it was not Islamic. So once again, I was drawn back.
Speaker 3:What took you back after you extricated yourself from it? I was another friend from university.
Speaker 1:They keep coming with all these ideas to me and my entrepreneurial Pontus Salander you know, he wants to they see your mile off Pontus.
Speaker 3:They're like we made this guy Muslim, now we took him away from finance, now we can take him back to finance.
Speaker 1:And I thought this time we're going to be investing in. We're not going to have, you know, bonds is not part of the. It was just, like you know, placing cash for a short term. I, I get that, but in the end I just decided, uh, that I can't do this. No, I can't do this. You. No, I can't do this. You left again.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The money was there again. You know drawing me big money, but what I did? I met really one of, I would say, sweden's best fund managers asset allocator, working with a lot of commodities. He was running one of the largest hedge funds in Sweden before, so we became really good friends and he's a devout Christian as well.
Speaker 3:So we talked about religion a lot which was really nice.
Speaker 1:We became really good friends. So that's what came out of this journey back into finance. So I think that could be also something in the future for.
Speaker 2:Islamic investors.
Speaker 1:I think, the diversification needs to be there.
Speaker 3:I agree. Actually, does Satana have any plans for that, or what do you think? I'm not sure I can't answer that. Okay, but what is Satana's next step?
Speaker 1:If the demand is there. Definitely I think the demand is definitely there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's just a question of how do we, where do we go from here? Because like for Muslims in the UK, people who are listening to this and they're like, okay, seems interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they can invest into a fund right now through any of the platforms exactly exactly so it's an actively managed what could.
Speaker 3:How do you guys compare to?
Speaker 1:like a wahid or I think we're more uh, as I said, I think most of the funds tend to follow an index right More passive, we're more active. So, for example, we don't have 16% Microsoft, we might have 4% Microsoft because we might have a German company, you know, at 4% that we thought okay, this is a good company to invest in, so we want to invest in that, which is very different from the HSBC, which is primarily US tech stock.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:You follow the index. Okay, you want to be close to the index. We want to beat the index. You know Most, I would say most. Are there maybe three funds that are actively managed here in the uk?
Speaker 3:very few, yeah very few very few so for people who don't know, actively versus passively managed.
Speaker 3:Passive is basically you're just following one of the big indexes yeah, like there's a foot s&p 500 and all you're doing is you're replicating how that index is created yeah but you're just putting a sharia filter on top so that, okay, maybe there's something non-Sharia compliant there, we'll remove that and it will just continue, Whereas actively managed means that you guys, your fund managers, are actually going in and saying I think that this, regardless of whatever the index is saying, I think we should have 4% of this German company because it's performing very well, and maybe we can de-risk it by bringing in this, this sookook over here, and you know it.
Speaker 3:Basically, people are making their own decisions. Yeah, and there's been this argument for a long time I think warren buffett's the one who said it that in in recorded history, or since they've been recording it, active has never beaten a passive fund. Have you heard it? What's, what's your take on that? I disagree, okay I it.
Speaker 1:In a lot of cases I could agree yeah, I mean, that's the same thing. When I worked in this investment company with my colleague Daniel, he would always say if I can find a good fund manager that could bring me alpha, beta, index. Beta is the following the index. But if I can find alpha I'll go with the alpha. If I can't find the alpha, I'll go with the beta. Okay, so if you can find a good fund manager that you know over the years, I think you have to look at. We have a three-year history here in our ETF. It's not you know, you have to. If you look at the Amarna Growth Fund from 1994 until now, we've beaten the index over the years.
Speaker 3:Maybe not every year but over time.
Speaker 1:If you do 1% here 2%, then over time we have beaten the index for our funds in the US, and hopefully we'll do it, because this is the same fund managers Monim Salam, Scott Climo. They're managing the American funds and also the European funds. Very cool.
Speaker 3:We're going to be in the US in a couple of weeks. So if there's any Satana people in California, let me know. It would be good to meet them.
Speaker 1:I'd love you to meet them, definitely. So what I was going to say before I kind of, you know, I cut myself off the screening what I was going to say with diversification was that, you know, after a Sharia screening of 5,000 companies, we had 2,000 left. Esg, we have 1,000 left, and then from those 1,000, we look at the fundamentals right, we look at is this an interesting company to own? Are they, you know, leading in the market, or you know, or how do they make money? How is the market? So that's why we kind of pick and choose out of these 1,000. And when those fundamentals are done, we have maybe 350 companies.
Speaker 1:Really we can pick and choose from 5,000 000 companies to 350 and we only pick 35 to 40 oh really, yeah, okay so okay, out of the whole cake, we just try to pick, so this is where we we think we we can beat the market also diversify like, if have you know a beta product, you know an index fund, maybe we can be the diversification for you, absolutely, because we're not going to be beta, we're going to be something else.
Speaker 1:And since we're not going to have any oil companies oil and gas and coal, you know we have heavy and tech and heavy and in pharmaceuticals, yeah, okay. So so that there are small ways to diversify right now, if you come back to that discussion, uh, but we need more, of course yeah, absolutely, but it seems very exciting.
Speaker 3:I'll definitely be checking it out. So if people want to find out more about Saturna, they can check it out through your website, I guess. Okay, website, yes, and can they reach out to you? We'll put it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll put the link on there On YouTube.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Nice one, nice one. Okay, your story is not yet complete, because what do you want to do next? What are you guys looking to do? Are you looking to expand? You're going to do a lot more events in the UK, aren't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, try to expand in the UK, of course, and also in Scandinavia. Okay, because I mean, every time I can, I'll follow how many investors, new investors, we get every time I give a seminar in a mosque or an event we sponsor.
Speaker 3:And the uptake is quite high every time you do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a couple of percent, I think, when I started last year. I think we've grown by 400% in investors Because, as you said, people don't know people don't know, they don't they don't have a clue so it's the best form of marketing people are scared.
Speaker 1:They don't I, and I found that here in the uk as well. Yeah, even though you have all these well, for me it's a lot of products, but for you guys it's it's maybe not enough of course uh, we can do better, but I found that people are still scared they don't know what does sharia say. You know how do I start. You know do I? I think most people they think if I'm gonna invest, it sounds so big. Start 50 pounds, do 50 pounds a month.
Speaker 1:You know, See how it goes. I use an ETF, have two ETFs, three Doesn't matter or a mutual fund or whatever.
Speaker 3:Do you think the best form of marketing is still in person, going and talking to people face-to-face in masjids, in mosques?
Speaker 1:I think so, I think so.
Speaker 3:We're kind of following whatever Saturn has done for the last well, 400 growth since you joined right, so yeah, so what's driving? From, from, from very small of course, but it, it's just uh oh yeah, I guess going from one to four customers is still 400. I don't think you've got more than that, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're not really looking at AUM right now. Sure, we just want to bring it out there and let people know that we're here and also here in the UK we want to differentiate ourselves. That okay, we do ESG. For me, es is islamic, you know. For me, that's why I I was, when I left finance the first time I was actually looking in an environmental sector you were in the wind farms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wanted to work in that sector because I thought this is for me, this is islamic, you know, saving the world from global warming and polluting. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's really the surah al-qawtar or any surah it's, it's, it's there, we're guardians of this planet exactly exactly so sure. So for me I I think all the Islamic funds should be ESG Definitely. Why would I go and invest in ExxonMobil, even though it might be Sharia compliant? Why they're polluting the whole.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is a big thing, and I think, a lot of Muslims, I think people are starting to care more about it. I hope so.
Speaker 1:But unfortunately I think ESG has gone a bit quiet. Yes, because Big greenwashing, yeah and and and now with with all the wars you know, especially conventional finance, they they're going to do into defense industry that's where the money are and exactly. But I think at least we, as muslim, we should push for ethical green For sure, definitely.
Speaker 3:Okay, fantastic. Final question Do you have any? Actually, I've got two questions for you. Yeah, how do you invest personally? What do you invest into?
Speaker 1:I do so we have In Sweden. We have similar to an ISA.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:It's like a tax wrapper, so we don't pay capital gains tax on. So I invest in an ISA I have. My foundation is Saturnal Kauter, because that's my only alternative as an ETF for a fund. I have actually some gold, the Han ETF, the Sharia compliant gold fund, actually I can invest in in Sweden Fine okay, it's called the Royal Mint Okay. It's a responsible physical gold. So those two I can like have, and then I invest in stocks there you go my friend Daniel from before.
Speaker 1:He serves with me with right now. It's a lot of mining companies. I see, okay, mining in in gold.
Speaker 3:So they're big established listed companies. Yeah, no startups or not really.
Speaker 1:No, um, I've done some.
Speaker 3:You know private equity investments okay before, but yeah, not really okay, more cool I was going to let you know about the kestrel funding round, but yeah, there we go and the my final question for you is um, do you have any advice? Uh, for us at kestrel, for what we're building? What would you like to see from a digital bank, an islamic digital bank?
Speaker 1:I think you know I sent you the app.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:That my friend was building in Sweden.
Speaker 1:Yes, you told me, that was a big unicorn in Sweden, and also they, because they had a lot of educational theme to it as well. I think you have as well. What I'm lacking maybe I would, because you're. What you're building is a one-stop shop.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I like that. I was looking for purification of single stocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that will help. We was looking for purification of single stocks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that will help.
Speaker 3:We do have a purification calculator, I know.
Speaker 1:but it's on your bank account, isn't it? Yes, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3:But if you go into our stock screener there's also a little purification calculator thing there.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, okay, I haven't found it yet.
Speaker 3:It's all going to change.
Speaker 1:It's all going to change because now we're introducing the digital bank, so, yeah, we'll introduce these features again, uh, but the current account, but I think I mean you're, you're already there or almost there, that you, you, if you can be that one-stop shop, you know why would I go anywhere else? Of course, because right now for myself, I have, in sweden, I have two banks for different purposes.
Speaker 1:I have, uh, four investment platforms, five, four investment platforms, different platforms wow so in some one I can invest in some things, and you know yeah, consolidate it.
Speaker 3:No one wants all these different platforms. You don't have any Islamic banks in Sweden, do you? No, no mortgages, no, nothing. We've got to bring the UK we've got to bring the.
Speaker 2:UK power there. We're waiting. Alright well, pontus, thank you so much for your time and we'll speak to you very soon, inshallah, the next episode we'll do in Sweden.
Speaker 1:We're waiting, we're waiting, all right. Well, pontus, thank you so much for your time, thank you so much and we'll speak to you very soon.
Speaker 3:Inshallah, the next episode we'll do in Sweden. Yeah, that would be very good, perfect.
Speaker 2:All right then Pontus.
Speaker 3:Assalamu alaikum, thank you very much. Wa alaikum assalam, wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, thank you. 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.