April 2016 63 www.bahrainthismonth.com offering mortgage and funding solutions to the country’s large Muslim population. He later found the Salic Superannuation Fund – Australian pensions are conducted through a superannuation fund and this gave Muslims the opportunity to have their pension cash invested in a Sharia compliant way. Later came islaminvest.com with its slogan “Let the Sharia guide you to prosperity”, which allows would-be investors to carry out research to establish the Sharia credentials of prospective investments. And this has led, naturally, to the idea for his latest venture. He explains: “What we’re doing now is looking at taking the knowledge from partnerships in Islamic finance and IT and building a special app. A platform where global investors are able to access various service providers in all financial aspects. We’ll be offering Islamic-compliant finance and investment worldwide. There are apps that will tell you, locally, if an investment is compliant but they are not global. “There’s not one app that gives screened equity and fund management telling you what [compliant] stock you can buy and giving access to the right people. “We subscribe to a committee that’s comparable with the Dow Jones Islamic Indices and are aiming to launch in the third quarter of this year. Islaminvest.com also has technical software for would-be investors and we will be transferring that to the app as well.” It’s been an exciting and varied career so far led both by financial acumen and a sense of service which has seen Malik flit, almost butterfly-like, from one successful venture to another. He explains: “I’ve always looked at ways to bring pioneering services. From property management I’ve gone on to working with developers on the design of common areas and how to price the upkeep of those areas. “From working in the property side I started looking at ways to apply both Australian and Islamic law, which brought about the investment companies. And, of course, development of the app is the next logical step. People want services at their fingertips and that’s what I aim to provide. “But you will notice, from all of this, that my philosophy is to always create businesses, but I hardly run any myself. “My role is to fund and create projects then find the right people that I can work with to manage it for me. “I invest in people with things like preferential shares and profit share and reward them properly. For example, the management of Iskan has not changed since 1999 when we worked together on the set up. “That has always been my principal, to work with people rather than businesses. If you look at the areas I have operated in, they have been very diverse and that’s because I have partnered with the right professional, ethical people all my life.” And yes, as mentioned in the beginning, he did bring the World Trade Centre brand to the Kingdom but it was soon passed on to a VIP investor who still controls it to this day. No more checking the financial press Advice at your fingertips
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk0MTkxMQ==