Islamic Finance Resists Equity Shift, May Stunt Growth

Shariah finance has been labelled “copycat” for its reliance on debt funding

Reuters – KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 — When Kuwait Finance House Malaysia helped develop a US$1.3 billion (RM4.1 billion) real estate project in the country in 2005 as a partner in the deal, Islamic equity property ventures were a rarity.

Five years on, the bank is embarking on its fourth building project using a similar equity concept but few others in the industry want to follow the same path, reflecting Islamic finance’s slow and difficult shift away from debt instruments.

Debt funding’s dominance of Shariah finance has earned the US$1 trillion industry the tag of “copycat” and limited its growth as critics question its ability to offer a fairer way of sharing risks and rewards that truly distinguishes it from conventional banking.

“Profit-sharing or equity structures are the true way of doing Islamic financing,” said Siti Mariam Mohd Desa, Kuwait Finance Malaysia’s real estate advisory director.

“It is a different concept because if you were to give out straight loans, you may as well go to a conventional bank.”

As the global financial system emerges from the debt crisis and banks shy away from assuming added risks, practitioners want Islamic finance to rely more on partnership structures and less on straight financing which they say has created a brand of finance which is Shariah compliant in form, but not in spirit.

They say equity financing such as musharaka and mudaraba are closer to the Shariah’s aim of ensuring gains and losses are shared equitably and a shift back to it would help banks win new business beyond its traditional markets.

While Islamic finance has flourished in Muslim markets such as the Middle East and Malaysia, many non-Muslims are unconvinced, saying the industry differs from conventional banking only in name.

“We cannot add value in markets which are mimics of conventional markets. At the moment, it’s difficult to see the value-added,” said Safdar Alam, head of Islamic structuring at JP Morgan in Bahrain.

“It’s a real opportunity, with the increased awareness globally of Islamic finance, to demonstrate this value and the difference and benefits. This is a chance that we might miss if we don’t do this well quite quickly.”

But banks’ reluctance to bear the risk of projects funded, companies’ unwillingness to share profits and scarcity of banking capital make equity financing an unappealing proposition.

The recent property slump in the Gulf, where equity financing is more common, badly hit Islamic firms such as Bahrain’s Gulf Finance House and could compound banks’ fears of becoming project partners.

Kuwait Finance Malaysia, which uses the musharaka equity structure to develop real estate, had a non-performing financing level of 6.73 per cent in September, more than thrice the industry average.

Its parent Kuwait Finance House, the Gulf state’s top Islamic bank, posted a 24 per cent drop in net profit in 2009 to 118.74 million dinars.

Equity financing models were born out of a belief in Islam that the financier must share the risks if he wants the rewards and that profits should be earned through enterprise.

While equity funding is commonly associated with higher returns, bankers say it may not necessarily be more profitable than debt as the latter allows for higher leverage.

Traditionally, popular Islamic debt-based instruments such as istisna and murabaha have been likened to interest-based loans where banks take limited risks and are guaranteed a return.

But as Islamic finance grew beyond traditional roles such as agriculture financing to funding government budgets and billion dollar real estate projects, some banks began leaning more towards debt instruments to limit their risks.

As banks’ capital grows scarce, they will be wary of parting with large sums to back equity ventures, said Mohammad Faiz Azmi, PriceWaterhouseCoopers’s global Islamic finance leader.

“On the demand side, the issue are is there enough corporates who are essentially willing to give up the upside?” Faiz said, referring to profit-sharing structures.

“The reality is that the people that would want to have equity forms of financing are usually the ones that you want to avoid lending money to anyway.”

Some practitioners say the push for more Islamic equity financing is ill-conceived.

“From the shariah’s perspective, there is no such evidence to support (the view) that Islamic banks or whoever wants to do business should do profit-sharing more than debt-based,” said Shariah scholar Aznan Hasan, who advises Barclays Capital London and Malaysia’s stock exchange operator Bursa Malaysia.

“Whether it is debt or equity that suits you better, it depends on commercial and business decisions, not Shariah matters.” — Reuters

Moving Away from Tawarruq?

Twenty-six Islamic banks signed off on a standardised Wakalah deposit agreement, which some bankers said could help the industry reduce its reliance on the controversial Commodity Murabahah structure, Reuters reports. “Besides cost and resource savings, the adoption of the standardised Wakalah placement agreement would promote transparency, consistency, operational efficiencies and robustness in Islamic deposit placement transactions,” said the Association of Islamic Banking Institutions Malaysia, which launched the template agreement. “In six months’ time, all the banks will be using the Wakalah,” said one Malaysian Islamic banker. “It has fewer issues than the Commodity Murabahah.”

Wakalah is an agency structure where a depositor or investor authorises an agent (the bank) to invest his funds in Shariah compliant assets or businesses.

Finding alternatives to replace controversial instruments is a step in the right direction and it augurs well for the industry.

3Ps – Products, Placement, Promotion

Experts (in Islamic banking & finance) are saying that in order to effectively challenge and compete with conventional finance, Islamic finance needs more products and a wider distribution channel. It would be difficult to attract liquidity into the industry without adequate products and distribution network. This growing industry also needs to develop more unique financial solutions and not resort to merely replicating conventional finance’s product line.

The wealthy GCC sovereign funds are believed to resort to investing in conventional products due to the lack of Shariah approved investment options.

Shariah based finance and investment is mainly based on partnerships and joint-ventures making it suitable for private equity ventures, venture capital as well as asset management. These sectors will allow the Islamic finance industry to create products according to Shariah values, especially on the prohibition of riba via pre-determined return rates.

According to a report published by Ernst & Young this year, as of 1Q 2009, there are only 14 Shariah compliant funds larger than USD500 million out of the 750 Islamic mutual funds under management. Total assets under management is less than USD50 million.

John Sandwick, an Islamic asset management consultant claims that the supply of Islamic funds is not enough to satisfy the demand. The market needs more products. The advent of the pension fund in the Middle East as well as the growing takaful industry will definitely increase the need for more products.

Experts also pointed out most Islamic funds tend to focus on equities and real estate and not much asset diversification especially into fixed income investments.

Sukuk is a ready made instrument to facilitate the Islamic asset management industry. Ijarah, Murabahah and Istisna based Sukuk will provide asset managers with more fixed income investment options.

Silke Bernard, a lawyer specialising in funds said, Islamic funds lacked access to the large distribution platforms used by asset managers and that Islamic funds often lacked the required minimum size of typically USD100 million and a track record of several years required by large asset managers.

It is often pointed out that there is a sizeable amount of Islamic (GCC) wealth looking for Shariah compliant investments. There have also been claims that Shariah compliant investment is already attracting a global fan base from Europe to Australia and Japan and this augurs well for the industry’s long term growth.

Liquidity Management

Conventional wisdom states that money must generate returns all the time, even when it is idle. Hence the creation of the money market, a place for trading idle money. When there is a trade, there will be a price; and the price of money is the interest rate. What determines the interest rate? Other than the forces of demand and supply; monetary policy, expectation of changes in the base rate, inflation also influences the price of money.

The money market is also a place where mismatches in assets and liabilities are rectified. Banks with excess funds (liabilities > assets) will sell (lend) the idle cash in the money market and banks facing a shortage of funds (assets > liability) will buy (borrow) money from the market.

The money market is therefore crucial to ensure the banking system and the economy works smoothly.

Why then do I say that the money market is an anomaly in Shariah based finance?

Firstly (I’m already sounding like a broken record), my understanding is, Shariah prohibits the trading of money because money is not a commodity; it is merely a tool to facilitate trade. Money is potential capital, useful only when put into productive economic use.

Secondly, money is a ribawi item, one which cannot be exchanged unless it is equal in value and transacted spot. The following hadith is the basis of this ruling.

The Prophet s.a.w. said “gold for gold, silver for silver, wheat for wheat, barley for barley, dates for dates and salt for salt should be exchanged like for like, equal for equal and hand to hand [on the spot]. If the types of the exchanged commodities are different, then sell them as you wish, if they are exchanged on the basis of a hand-to-hand transaction. (Sahih Muslim)

Therefore, the act of lending overnight money at 3.2%, contravenes the above hadith because (1) the exchanged value differs and (2) it is not exchanged on spot basis.

Then Tawarruq came along. Liquidity management in a Shariah compliant manner is now possible via the buying and selling of commodities (which does not leave the warehouse and is reused again and again for subsequent transactions). The route is longer but the objective is met nonetheless, money is exchanged in different amounts at different times, made “permissible” due to the presence of the trade. It sounds like a hilah to me because the whole transaction is undertaken merely to circumvent Shariah ruling on riba. It also does not entail any direct economic activity. The biggest beneficiary is the commodity brokers, getting paid for facilitating a seemingly pointless transaction.

No doubt, there will be times of excess liquidity and it does not make economic sense to keep the potential capital idle without generating any income.

This excess liquidity can be channelled towards financing short term projects or providing short term funding. Trade financing would be a good place to start. Retailers/traders usually buy from suppliers or wholesalers or manufacturers on credit terms. Banks could offer a short term murabahah facility to finance this type of transactions in the form of a 3 day, 1 week, 2 week or 30 day murabahah financing. This would channel the excess liquidity towards funding real economic activity.

Another way to absorb the excess liquidity is by way of a short term lease. A clearing house needs to be set up. The clearing house shall own a pool of tenanted properties. When a bank (or anyone for that matter) has excess liquidity, they will purchase property from the clearing house and the rental will be paid to them. When they need the cash, the property will be sold back to the clearing house at market value. In most cases, the purchase and sale price would be the same as it is quite unlikely for real estate values to fluctuate very much in the span of a few weeks.

Both methods entails actual economic activity and the returns from the investment are generated from actual economic activity.

There is always a Shariah based solution to every financial need. If there isn’t, the financial transaction is probably not in tandem with Shariah in the first place.

Will There be a New World Financial Order? by Pankaj Kumar (The Star, Business section, 21 January 2009)

Copy of the email I sent to the Editor of The Star, commenting on the need for an alternative financial model.

Dear Editor,

Quoted from Pankaj Kumar's article in The Star 21 January 2009:

"The simple argument is that asset managers or hedge fund managers do not need crude oil or other commodities for that matter or even currencies in their books.They have no business to be in these markets if they are purely speculating on price movements.They should stick to basic investment in asset classes, that is, genuine companies that use these commodities for real markets, real products and real profits. And yes, we do need a new world financial order to get rid of speculative activities which have time and again created asset bubbles and financial manias."

I cannot agree more with Pankaj's observation and would like to point out that an alternative financial order is already in place – Shariah (Islamic) based Finance.

The principles of Shariah disapprove of uncertain contract terms, prohibit gambling and abhor speculative practices. Unfortunately, these elements are prevalent in most financial instruments of late which ultimately caused the fallout in the financial markets that we are experiencing now. If undertaken in its true form, Shariah based financing can eliminate most of the problems associated with conventional financing as laid out by Pankaj in his article.

The key is however, to practice Shariah based financing as it should be, according to the principles of Shariah and not as a conventional product with an Arabic name. Shariah based finance is totally different in all respects from the conventional finance and banking the world has seen and grown to love for the past 100 years. It would be disastrous and detrimental to the development and growth of Shariah based finance if practitioners (and regulators) continue to develop so-called Shariah products based on the conventional platforms and norms.

What is needed is a paradigm shift in the way we approach and view Shariah based finance. We need to accept that although the objectives of Shariah based financing are similar to that of conventional finance, the means of achieving it is drastically different. Different here does not mean changing the product name or adding a few clauses in the transaction documents. The difference is in the mechanics, determination of profits (pricing), contractual obligations and relationship of all parties, the risk analysis and management, recovery methods, source of funds, utilisation of proceeds and remedies in the event of default.

In order for Shariah based finance to prosper, practitioners must not only be well versed in the laws of Shariah but more importantly understand the objectives of Shariah. The market also needs to be made aware of the uniqueness of Shariah based finance. Only then can we see the emergence of the true form of Shariah (Islamic) finance.

Regards,

Anyone Got Guts?

What does it take to succeed? What does it take to make a breakthrough? Guts, perseverance and belief. IMHO, none of that is presently present in the Islamic banking and finance industry. No, I’m not putting those hardworking Islamic finance professionals down. All I’m saying is the guts to develop a product which is not based on the conventional platform is absent. All the products from the BBA mortgages to the Inah based personal financing and even the Sukuk Musharakah is tailored to run on the conventional platform especially from the pricing aspect. Granted that different prices for identical products cannot happen in efficient markets but one must remember that a Shariah based mortgage and a conventional based one albeit having the same objective (i.e. home ownership) is drawn upon different principles and hence cannot be priced identically.

What we need is the courage to come up with a product or solution that is not only Shariah compliant in form but also in substance. Can we have an Ijarah based mortgage whose pricing is directly tied to the prevailing rental rates regardless of the base financing (lending) rates? It is after all a lease based mortgage. A Sukuk Musharakah in my opinion should not be priced and traded like a debt based bond; it should be priced and traded like an equity based instrument.Shariah based financial solutions are tied to real assets and actual economic activity and hence should be priced and traded accordingly. We have to breakaway from doing things based on the conventional norms and platforms if we are serious about promoting Islamic banking and finance.