RIYADH, 11 July — An Islamic financial service and product provider, iHilal.com, has launched a website offering opportunities to invest in stock markets while adhering to Islamic principles.
The portal will help investors to park their money in Islamic mutual funds of prestigious firms like Saudi American Bank, the National Commercial Bank and Orbitex. Retail investors can trade stocks through the site with a fund as little as $1000, banking sources said here yesterday.
They said hundreds of thousands of Muslim investors from around the world had been looking for Shariah-compliant transactions in the stock market.
Personal Finance, a business journal published in the region, spelled out the salient features of the new user-friendly website in a report in its latest issue. It said the site would provide registered members access to free research, news and stock quotations through its Investor Education Center. There would be an opportunity to learn more about Islamic finance, it added.
With its low-entry level of $1000, iHilal made its services available to small and medium net-worth investors, the report said. This is in contrast to many other companies that offer Islamic financial products and services to high net-worth investors.
Referring to the Islamic funds, the sources said there were more than 100 Shariah-based funds worldwide and more were planned by several banks in the Gulf countries.
There could be over 140 million Muslims out to invest their money in Shariah-compliant instruments as newly-launched websites make investment opportunities easily accessible, said the report.
Since its launch last April, iHilal.com has been operating exclusively as an online service company. iHilal has been using the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index, which has already highlighted what can and cannot be bought under Shariah.
