The Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement rely on the world making $6 trillion in infrastructure investment every year, funds which are difficult to channel into infrastructure  High investment sizes, illiquid markets and a complex web of contracts limit infrastructure investment to only the largest institutional investors  Fasset has launched a blockchain powered platform to increase liquidity and expand the investor base for infrastructure by digitizing real assets

RFI Foundation and DDCAP Group™ are excited to jointly announce the release of a case study and podcast showing how DDCAP’s experience demonstrates how SMEs can influence others to adopt responsible finance.  Despite lacking the scale of the financial institutions with whom they work, SMEs in responsible finance can leverage their agility as an advantage and benefit from adopting sustainable and responsible practices more quickly than other institutions. For DDCAP Group™, these actions have...

This session, a replay of a webinar released on 11 May 2020 organized by RFI Foundation and Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre (DIEDC), looks at the role for Islamic finance in the Covid-19 response.   Speakers:  Blake Goud, CEO, RFI Foundation (Moderator) Abdulla Al Awar, CEO, DIEDC Ramya Gopalan, Global Innovation Coordinator and Alternative Financing Lead, IFRC Rafe Haneef, Chief Executive Officer, Group Transaction Banking, CIMB Khaled Al Aboodi, Managing Partner, Sustainable...

Shariah screens limit the number of defensive assets available for asset managers in narrow  markets where  financial institutions represent 25-30% of the market Investment managers can offset some of the additional risk by using ESG integration strategies, as well as investing in global sukuk The institutionalization of Shari'ah standards gives Islamic asset managers a  leg up compared to ESG in terms of clarity about how their investment  process is affected by their approach to responsible...

This month, we are featuring an update to our podcast with Matthew Martin, Founder & CEO of Blossom Finance that we released in June of last year.  In this update podcast, Matthew gives us an update on Blossom Finance, which have recently closed the world’s first microsukuk. Blossom's sukuk is notable for a number of reasons, including its proof-of-concept size of IDR 702 million ($50,000) and its use of blockchain to manage the KYC, issuance, periodic payments, trading and redemption. ...

This episode of the RFI podcast features an interview with Dr. Shalini Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of Sanshodhan: An E-Waste Exchange, the winner of the 2019 Support Disruption for Good Challenge sponsored by DDCAP Group.  Dr. Shalini accepted the award and presented Sanshodhan to the audience of responsible finance leaders in April 2019 at the RFI Summit at Abu Dhabi Global Markets.  In the podcast, she introduces Sanshodhan and provides an update on their progress since the last time we...

The RFI Foundation is excited to announce the release of an in-depth case study of one of our member financial institutions, CIMB Islamic Bank (“CIMB Islamic”), which has adopted responsible finance practices in a systematic way. The case study and this companion podcast are designed to show that it is possible for an Islamic bank to integrate responsible finance practices into its operations and strategy and to generate wide stakeholder buy-in based on a fundamental business rationale.  The...

This month, we are featuring an interview with Stella Cox CBE, Managing Director of DDCAP Group.  As you’ll hear, she has been involved with the Islamic finance industry for many years and has been a consistent champion for Islamic finance, responsible finance and women in the financial sector.  Ms. Cox was a member of the UK Government’s Task Force on Islamic Finance that advised the government on its debut sukuk issuance, one of the first from a non-Muslim majority country sovereign...

When the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) launched their Credit Rating Initiative, one of the six founding members was RAM Ratings, after interacting with WWF and Saturna Capital on sustainable finance and understanding how a credit rating agency could drive change. RAM Ratings was the first domestic credit rating agency in Malaysia when it was set up in 1990. In the time since, as Malaysia has developed Islamic capital markets, RAM has rated many of the sukuk issued as Malaysia’s...

This month, we are featuring an interview with Talal Yassine, OAM, Managing Director of Crescent Wealth, who is also a member of the RFI Foundation Board of Trustees.  In addition to his work at Crescent Wealth, he’s active across a range of organizations in Australia.  Talal is an Adjunct Professor within the Business School, Western Sydney University he is Chairman of Quay Capital, the Australian Arab Dialogue Limited, and as the Patron of the Crescent Institute Ltd. He also serves on the...

This month, we are featuring an interview with Mounir Khouzami, Executive Board Member, Chairman of the Advisory Board and Co-Founder of Swiss Arab Network, who has also recently joined the RFI Foundation Board of Trustees.  As he will explain, Mounir is working across three nonprofits to advance his personal mission of being an “intercultural bridge builder”.  He has spent the past 10 years, most recently with UBS, working on strategy, innovation, change management in finance. We also...

This episode of the podcast features an interview with Inge Relph, Head of Sustainability & Strategic Relationships of the ERA Foundation, who has also recently joined the RFI Foundation Board of Trustees.  Inge’s career has been guided by the global dimensions on human rights and how women can play an important role in the process of peacebuilding. She has taken a hands-on approach to her work including living in Egypt and mentoring women leaders through conflicts in Iraq, Libya,...

Diane Schrader is Founder & CEO of thirdACT.  ThirdACT is a FinTech working to drive resiliency in communities with non-debt financing of energy efficiency and renewable energy investment. Instead of using debt, thirdACT finances properties’ energy efficiency upgrades in exchange for a share of future sale proceed for the next 20-30 years. This structure provides an uncertain individual property level return that, with help from big data, can be combined together into a portfolio that...

We have been doing the podcast now for a year – this is the thirteenth episode – and so we’re going to change up the podcast with a guest host.  Our guest host is Stuart Hutton, Chief Investment Officer of Simply Ethical, and he’ll interview Blake Goud, CEO of the RFI Foundation about RFI.  In the conversation, Blake shares the history of the RFI Foundation, why it was set up, what it has accomplished so far and what it's working on for the rest of the year.  We had a lot of good...

Michael Looft has lived a storied life. A globe trotter by nature, he’s worked and traveled in upwards of 50 countries around the world. Michael has spent over a decade working in financial services for the poor (microfinance) at the crowdfunding organizations Kiva and Lendahand. He holds graduate degrees from both St. John's College and Harvard.    Michael has published three books. His latest book is the novel Crossing Allenby Bridge, a story of a man whose adventures around Asia and the...

Matthew Joseph Martin is an early pioneer in the application of financial tech for responsible finance. Combining his passion for Islamic finance with his deep financial technology background, Matthew founded Blossom Finance in 2014 which aims to increase the availability and inclusivity of Islamic microfinance. Matthew's background includes engineering and product management experience in the payment card, money remittance, mobile payments, and mobile banking sectors at venture capital...

Dr Aishath Muneeza is Associate Professor at INCEIF and is one of the key founder of Islamic finance in Maldives. She is the first female Deputy Minister of Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the first chairperson of the Hajj Pilgrimage Fund of Maldives. Currently, she is the chairperson of Maldives Centre for Islamic Finance. She has published books and numerousarticles on Islamic Finance and her research areas include legal studies & corporate governance applicable to Islamic Finance. She...

For one RFI trustee who recently retired from running an Islamic finance university, the way forward for Islamic finance has become clearer as he has had more time to think.  Daud Vicary Abdullah, former president & CEO of INCEIF, the Global University on Islamic Finance, spoke to RFI Foundation CEO Blake Goud for our podcast following a presentation at the Securities Commission & Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) roundtable.    Daud Abdullah’s conversation — which builds upon...

In this podcast, we talk to Dr. Sherin Kunhibava, a Senior Lecturer at the Univerity Malaya Law faculty who had her research on how Malaysia’s Islamic banks approach environmental impact recently published in the Arab Law Quarterly. Dr. Sherin’s expertise is in commercial law and Islamic finance law and she has worked both as an academic and also has worked in banking and elsewhere in the financial industry.  Her research focuses on whether environmental impact is important for a bank’s...

In this podcast, we talk to Jessica Robinson, Founder & CEO of Moxie Future, who was previously Head of Asia for the UN supported Principles for Responsible Investment.  Moxie Future is the world’s first insights, education and community platform empowering women as responsible and impact investors.  Moxie Future has a report out now that is designed to address a gap in the data relating to what women investors are looking for.  To start filling this gap, Moxie Future commissioned a...

In this podcast, we talk to Justin Sykes, Managing Director of Innovest Advisory, a boutique advisory firm focused on the social enterprise sector. Innovest works to bring in private investors seeking both financial returns and a clear and measurable social impact. This positive impact comes through investing in social businesses in some of the most challenging parts of the world using market-based approaches.   One of these social enterprises is Kaah International Microfinance Service...

In order to promote financial inclusion, sometimes it is necessary to start with a non-financial activity to reach people who are not used to engaging with the financial sector.  In this podcast, we talk to Morrad Irsane, Co-Founder of Melltoo about their peer-to-peer marketplace, no-meetup classifieds, based in the United Arab Emirates.  Melltoo acts as the trusted intermediary between buyers and sellers of secondhand goods, providing a service that combines delivery, payment, and escrow for...

In this podcast, we talk to Dr. Jemilah Mahmood who began her career as an obstetrician and gynaecologist before founding an international humanitarian relief organization in Malaysia.  She shared wth us some examples of both the need and the opportunity for Islamic finance to bring a unique approach to humanitarian funding. In addition, we welcome her as a member of the RFI Foundation Board of Trustees where she serves in a personal capacity. 

In this podcast, we talk to Umar Munshi, Founder of Ethis Ventures, a pioneering group of ethical and Islamic crowdfunding companies that fund government-backed Social Housing development projects in Indonesia. Ethis’ community has crowd-invested in projects to build 5,000 affordable houses in Indonesia since 2015.