Sharia compliant financing prohibits making huge profits through charging of interest on loans. It also prevents beneficiaries of loans from the Islamic finance institutions from spending that money on goods or services that are considered wrong under Islam.

“Crescent Takaful SACCO has been shaped as the preferred conduit through which both locals and the diaspora can undertake local investments in a secure, reliable and stress-free manner,” said the SACCO’s chairman Hassan Bashir.

Some of the products that the new SACCO will provide include a diaspora account to help Kenyans in the diaspora save, personal and business accounts, development finance funding for property developers and asset finance among other products.

Bashir said the SACCOwill also provide its clients with investment advisory and management services. First Community Bank was the first fully fledged sharia compliant bank to be licensed to operate in Kenya. Thereafter, several other Islamic finance companies were licensed as the demand for the sharia complaint financial products grew. Other sharia compliant financial organisations in Kenya include the Takaful Insurance company and Gulf Africa bank.

Prior to the establishment of these firms, the only sharia compliant financial service was through some Islamic banking departments set up by conventional banks like Barclays and Kenya Commercial banks among others.

*This article was published by The Star. Read the original article here.