Dubai: Guidance Financial Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Malaysia-based Capital Guidance, a privately-held investment and operating firm with presence across South East Asia, Middle East and North America, wants to link the vast Islamic investment opportunities between the Middle East and Asia, Dr Hasnita Hashim, chief executive officer of Guidance Investments, told Gulf News in an interview.
“Asia and the Middle East together have two large Islamic assets and liquidity pools. If appropriately linked these two regions can deliver strong value for investors while making innovative investment opportunities and ethical funding bases on Sharia principles available across both the regions,” Dr Hashim said.
Guidance Financial Group specialises in four broad areas of activity such as international finance, investment management and capital markets services. In international finance the company helps to build Sharia-compliant financial institutions across different countries while in investment management it creates and managing real estate, fixed income and private equity products for institutional and private investors. In capital markets, the company offers financial advisory services for corporations seeking to issue sukuks, structured products and financing of real assets.
“Our involvement in Islamic finance and investment activities ranges from housing finance innovations in primary and secondary mortgage sectors; high-quality alternative investment products across several asset classes for institutional investors; capital market solutions for corporations seeking financing from Islamic investors; and Sharia structuring and placement services for corporations, investment funds and other parties,” she said.
Guidance is already a major force in Sharia-compliant mortgages in the United States. Currently, Guidance Residential is the largest provider of Sharia-compliant home financing in the United States to the more than two million US Muslims and holds an 80 per cent share of this segment of the US mortgage market.
The company works closely with Freddie Mac [Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation] to create mortgage products that would meet the investment requirements of major secondary market participants, including Freddie Mac.
“In the US we have a real estate asset base of more than $5 billion (Dh18.36 billion). Our ambition is to create a global platform of Islamic real estate investment opportunities. In Asia we are putting together a platform that as opportunities from south-east Asia and plans to do a REITs [real estate investment trust] listing in a few year’s time. We are also exploring the possibility of a dual listing to include the GCC markets,” she said.
In the GCC and wider Middle East region, the company has plans to replicate the success of its US residential mortgage business targeted at primary mortgage customers and institutional investors seeking secondary market asset pools. The company is already involved in providing primary mortgages through Dar Al Tamleek in Saudi Arabia.
Dar Al Tamleek currently is the exclusive representative of the Saudi Public Pension Agency’s Masakin programme, which seeks to encourage home ownership among government employees.
“We are looking at securitisation of mortgages from in Saudi Arabia into fixed-income funds for institutional investors. Although the region’s secondary market for mortgages is not very liquid we expect robust demand from the institutional market,” she said.
