FINCA Afghanistan's Islamic Banking Products
One of the major elements of FINCA’s success in Afghanistan has been its deference towards Islamic banking principles. Since its inception, FINCA Afghanistan has offered a line of sharia-compliant microfinance products, developed after careful vetting with local religious leaders, and confirmed through a fatwa acquired from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt (the world’s most respected Islamic institution of higher learning). Its current line of Murabaha loan products is based on an agreement where the seller (i.e. FINCA) expressly mentions the cost he has incurred on the commodities to be sold and sells it to another person (the client) by adding a markup on the original cost, which is known to the buyer. It is one of the most popular modes of exchange used by banks in Islamic countries to promote interest-free transactions (interest being forbidden by sharia law). Aside from being Afghanistan’s first sharia-compliant microfinance organization, FINCA can perhaps claim to have created one of the world’s first Murabaha group-lending products.
Read more about this topic: FINCA Afghanistan
Famous quotes containing the words banking and/or products:
“One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming administration is a change in our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.”
—George Wald (b. 1906)