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Dr Hardeep shares with us the services the Fyshe Group provides,
particularly in addressing the investment needs of the Muslim
community
- Could you
briefly describe who Fyshe Crestar is and when you were
established?
Crestar is an asset management venture of Fyshe Group
Stockbrokers. Serving both institutional and private clients,
it was established in July 2003 with the intention of
pioneering a fresh approach to the Islamic investment
market. Crestar employs proprietary quantitative and qualitative
filters in order select equities and to offer a bespoke
service for both its private and institutional clients.
- What services
do you provide? Which markets do you cover?
For institutions we provide access to the UK markets
and general equity trading.
For private clients we offer advisory and discretionary
portfolio management services, with direct access to global
stock markets along with tailored tax sheltering in PEPs,
ISAs, and SIPPs (for UK residents).
Crestar also provides general financial advice and asset
allocation strategies with regard to third party collective
fund selection.
- What characteristics
differentiate the Islamic investor from others?
The challenge for retail financial houses is getting across
the concept that Islamic investments are about risk sharing
rather than conventional risk transfer or alternatively
about "an agreed and fair reward for fair effort".
The constraints to popular participation in Islamic economics
lie in the thesis that conventional economic doctrines make
the temptation of risk transfer too great for many to resist.
The challenge for Islamic parallel institutions is to illustrate
that the desirable profitability is achievable on a stand
alone basis. It is to illustrate that Islamic financial
channels are about ethical filters of high esteem in the
first place, but are then about hard-nosed results - which
require conventional business sense.
So, what is being presented to investors who wish to
invest within Islamic principles around the world? In
essence, from the universe of investment choices available
to conventional investors, a subset is filtered out using
key accepted Islamic criteria. Beyond this, normal business
sense must prevail.
- How are
you different from the other service providers?
Whereas our competition can offer collective investments
schemes offshore only, we differ in being properly FSA regulated
and being an onshore entity in the UK. In addition, our
transparency allows us to structure offshore investments
where specific client needs arise. The advantage of providing
bespoke services is that we can accommodate client specific
needs that collective funds could never. Such tailoring
of services means that our services become particularly
suitable for high-net-worth clients and family funds.
- What do
you see as the main trends in your sector?
The main trend in our sector is the recognition that Islamic
investments for private clients goes beyond the simple set-up
of such services, and much more towards the provision of
tax efficient wraps etc. In the UK markets these include
Self Invested Pension Schemes and PEP's & ISA's.
- What does the future hold for
Islamic investors?
Historically many Muslim investors have in various ways
sought to apply the wisdom of Shari'ah to the noise of
conventional investment channels. These valiant individual
efforts are finally being met with a genuine range of
retail and institutional investments that they can participate
in. Hand-in-hand with this, the key advice for all investors
is to understand the risks, take good advice, know the
exit and invest profitably! The hope and expectation remain
that, with an increasing demand for Islamic investments
at the consumer level, product innovation and choice will
increase over time to parallel conventional institutions.
Contact Details
Hardeep Tamana
Samiul Siddique
Fyshe Group
Tel: +44 20 7549 2850
Fax: +44 20 7549 2895
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