National Bank of Fujairah (NBF) has joined Nasdaq Dubai’s Islamic financing Murabaha platform, which offers advantages to financial institutions and clients seeking Sharia’a-compliant solutions and trading opportunities.
Since its launch in 2014, over $76 billion worth of transactions have been executed via the platform. Transactions valued at $26 billion have taken place so far in 2017, up 18 percent from $22.1 billion in the same period last year.
NBF is the first conventional bank to join the Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha platform since the platform’s launch in 2014. The bank rolled out its Sharia’a-compliant window NBF Islamic in 2014 and has recently expanded its activities to include a suite of Sharia’a-compliant services.
The bank’s strategic priorities focus on developing NBF Islamic into a full-fledged proposition encompassing a comprehensive range of solutions for both retail and corporate banking segments.
NBF CEO Vince Cook said, “We are very excited about joining the Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform. The move underlines our commitment to offering reliable and efficient Islamic finance services to our clients. The innovative platform complements our existing offerings as we seek to fulfil our clients’ growing needs in this space. It enables our clients to conduct transactions quickly and efficiently at a fixed cost and in a transparent manner – all within an environment that provides the certainty of Sharia’a-compliance.”
Hamed Ali, chief executive of Nasdaq Dubai, said, “As a prominent UAE financial institution dedicated to supporting businesses and individuals, National Bank of Fujairah is an important addition to our Murabaha platform. Our collaboration reflects the increasing participation of conventional financial institutions in the field of Islamic finance and as the market grows, Nasdaq Dubai will attract more conventional as well as Islamic financial institutions to participate on it, both regionally and internationally.”
The Murabaha platform aims to provide cost savings and a reduction in processing times for its participants.
