Islamic finance star
With a string of awards to his credit, Amman Muhammad, FNB Islamic Banking CE, stands tall in the world of Islamic finance. But his journey to the top was fraught with challenges.
There was no top private school for Muhammad, who matriculated from the Johannesburg Secondary School in Mayfair. “Schools do not come much tougher,” he quips.
And after his father’s business was hit by the closure of a major client, there was no option of going to university. “I had to go to work to help support the family,” he says.
Muhammad persevered, gaining a BCom from Unisa. It opened the first door for him into Islamic finances: a position with Habib Overseas Bank.
His next big break came when he landed a job at Deloitte. In his 10 years with Deloitte, Muhammad qualified as a chartered accountant and notched up broad experience in advisory and consulting roles.
He rounded off his stint at the firm with the formation of its first Islamic consulting practice. Absa, a client, liked what it saw, snapping up Muhammad as its Islamic banking MD in 2009.
Muhammad spread his wings wide, launching Islamic banking in Tanzania through National Bank of Commerce, an Absa affiliate. Reflecting his success, the bank was chosen as the best Islamic bank in Africa and the Middle East by Global Finance magazine and Islamic Finance News in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
It earned for Muhammad the position of head of Barclays Bank’s African Islamic banking. It also attracted the attention of FNB, then struggling with what was its unimaginatively named Islamic finance unit.
With then FNB CE Michael Jordaan’s backing, Muhammad waded in, restoring management stability, replacing the sharia board and giving the business a real identity as FNB Islamic Banking. He also turned his attention to another priority: furthering Islamic finance in SA.
“The playing field was not level,” says Muhammad of a tax regime then prejudicing Islamic finance. He and other industry players set to work with national treasury to find a solution. They found it and the National Tax Act was amended accordingly.
It paved the way for SA to launch its first sovereign sukuk (Islamic bond) in 2014, a move in which it was pipped to the post by the UK as the first non-Muslim country to do so. “It put SA onto the global Islamic finance map,” says Muhammad.
Together with a good supply of Islamic scholars, it has made SA a springboard into African Islamic finance, says Muhammad. He intends capitalising on this advantage.
“There are 280m Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa,” he says. FirstRand, through FNB and RMB, has 200m of them as a potential audience.
In Tanzania, Muhammad is looking to the launch of Islamic products through FNB Tanzania. Of West Africa, he says: “There are exciting opportunities through RMB’s corporate activity. We are actively exploring them.”
Looking further afield, he sees big potential in India, where FirstRand has a banking licence. “There are 400m Muslims in India,” he says.
Muhammad was named at the Global Islamic Finance Awards held in Bahrain in September as the upcoming personality in global Islamic finance for 2015. I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong. I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime. I find it hard to apologise for removing Saddam [Hussein]. Former British prime minister Tony Blair’s qualified apology for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.