MEDIA CENTER

SRB launches “Verify Shari’a Certificate” tool

Shariyah Review Bureau (SRB) today announced the launch of its new Certificate (fatwa) verification engine to provide customers, investors and its expanding portfolio of institutional clients with real-time visibility to Shari’a compliance health and status of their potential investments.

Available globally to all investors to whom SRB’s Shari’a Certificates are presented, the new verification experience includes progression status, real-time visibility, the latest Shari’a Audit transactional date and validity of the underlying investment.

“To meet the future, the industry will need to contemplate similar arrangements and embrace stronger measures that extend beyond Shari’a Certificates, forcing real-time information on continuous compliance and ongoing Shari’a assurance of transactions. Our  web-based tool brings us one step closer to achieving that prospect for the Islamic industry.”  states Yasser S. Dahlawi, Chief Executive Officer of SRB.

As Islamic investments spreads to countries worldwide, staying up-to-date with changing status of Islamic investments is an important task but what is also being considered crucial by the expanding community of Islamic investors is the underlying investments constant observance to Islamic principles, advisory assurance and maintaining direct contact with Shari’a supervisors in today’s global Islamic markets. This is what “Verify your Shari’a Certificate” seeks to perform.

“What we are doing is introducing a simple concept in the industry that information about ongoing Shari’a compliance and validation is as valuable as the Shari’a Certificate of the investment itself” comments Mansoor M. Ahmed, Assistant General Manager at SRB. “Our Shari’a Certificates are seen by private and institutional investors from different parts of the world and we want to ensure that customers viewing them are also able to track and validate the Shari’a Compliance establishment before and after investment, whether they were investing in a private transaction or  an institutional fund.”

Emphasizing on the importance, Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad, Shari’a Advisor, at SRB, says, “We know that investors have been seeking more clarity on the compliance arrangements of their investments and the ability to assure themselves that supervisory Shari’a Audits are being conducted on a periodic basis.” “Our Certificate users will now have the ability to know whether their particular investment or fund is still being supervised by the respective supervisory Shari’a Audits.” He also stresses on the increasing sophistication of Islamic Investors “We are seeing more and more investors who seek confidence from Shari’a Advisors and want to connect with them to understand the compliance health from a Shari’a perspective. Keep track of the validity of their private market investment and be able to meet their data requirements with Shari’a Audit reporting assurance.”

The Certificate Verification tool is expected to provide access to a set of source data necessary to provide granular Shari’a assurance information in a timely, transparent and consistent manner with easy format information anytime, anywhere.