Boost for women in Islamic banking
SAMINA Akram left her job at Merrill Lynch International Bank eight years ago to start her own consultancy in London, specialising in sharia-compliant finance. Now she’s seeking to empower women in maledominated Islamic banking.
What started as an informal ladies lunch club with other women in the industry will this week become the first global Women in Islamic & Ethical Finance Forum, a conference for more than 200 people at KPMG’s Canary Wharf offices in London.
Sharia-compliant finance forbids interest and typically relies on deals in which the buyer and the seller share risk as well as profit.
Akram, 36, who set up Samak Consultants, seeks to support women in an industry in which they face more obstacles than in conventional banking due to religious conservatism, restrictions on mixed-gender working environments and stereotypes about women in Islamic finance.
In the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council a shift may already be under way, as the region’s banks aim to draw more female clients and recognise they need more female bankers to do so, says PwC.
Women’s net worth in the Gulf may grow as much as 15% to about $258bn in the 10 years to end-2023, according to Kuwait Financial Centre.
“There is opportunity, absolutely,” says Ashruff Jamall, the Dubai-based global head of the Islamic finance division at PwC. “It’s a question of priorities. Islamic banks are now beginning to focus on the women’s segment. Developing female leadership also serves as a catalyst in attracting women as customers.”
Having started at Merrill Lynch in an administrative role, Akram rose to run the lender’s Islamic finance wealth management business. She left the bank in April 2009 as investment banks were shifting focus to outside Islamic finance consultants rather than in-house experts.
“I was an outsider with no direct industry experience and being a woman certainly did not help,” Akram says. “My personal struggle in the industry made me realise the obstacles women face and what needs to be done to overcome them. This is where the Women in Islamic Finance idea came from.”
Unemployment among women is five times higher than for men in the Gulf, and women hold less than 1% of top executive positions, among the lowest figures worldwide, according to a McKinsey Middle East report last year. “The Gulf Co-operation Council is only now waking up to the fact that women have a powerful economic voice,” Akram says.
In more conservative countries, such as Saudi Arabia, there are religious and social constraints such as a ban on genders mixing in the work environment.
While women in the kingdom make up the majority of university students, they account for just 21% of the workforce, with most of them employed in education and healthcare, according to Emad Mostaque, a London-based strategist at emerging markets consultancy company Ecstrat.
In other parts of the world with large Muslim populations, women have made more progress in Islamic banking. Two of Malaysia’s 16 Islamic lenders are run by women and three of the 11-member central bank Sharia Advisory Board are female.
Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank has unveiled a yearlong initiative to mentor about 40 female bankers and prepare them for more challenging leadership roles. “We wanted to make sure the ladies at the bank are given a career path with training so that if they have been forgotten or overlooked, then they are now in the spotlight,” says CEO Tirad Mahmoud.