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Putting faith in Islamic mortgages
Putting faith in Islamic
mortgages
MICHAEL
STUPARYK/TORONTO STAR
Omar Kalair, left, founder of UM Financial Ltd., talks business
with Jens Lohmueller, a manager with the Credit Union
of Central Ontario.
Islamic finance
There are about 300 Islamic financial institutions in
75 countries, with assets of more than $300 billion (
In the past five years, the growth rate of these Islamic institutions has
exceeded 15 per cent a year.
There is pent-up demand among the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, many living in
oil-rich nations, for financial products that are compliant with Shariah, the legal and ethical code of Islam.
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world.
Source: KPMG
Since Shariah law forbids Muslims from paying or earning
interest, UM Financial's Omar Kalair
set out to find an alternative to conventional mortgages
January 29, 2007
Wearing a black tunic that falls below
his knees, head covered by a kufi (a small hat, worn
for modesty), cheeks concealed by a neatly groomed beard, Omar Kalair, 31, founder of UM Financial Inc., is the very
picture of a traditional Muslim man.
But he has been criticized by
fundamentalists in his community for working with mainstream financial
institutions – even though his purpose is applauded by all.
"There were people who said we
shouldn't get involved (with banks)," Kalair
says, "but Muslims want to buy houses. They need access to financial
support."
At issue is Shariah,
the legal and ethical code of Islam as revealed in the Koran and the life of
the prophet Muhammad. Shariah lays out three main
prohibitions related to finances: no interest, speculation or gambling is
allowed.
Kalair is neither gambling nor speculating when he helps Muslims buy
houses, and he has figured out how to provide financial support – what we call
a mortgage – with no interest charges attached.
Which doesn't mean UM's
product is cheaper than a conventional mortgage. In fact, it's slightly more
expensive, because of the added complexity of the process.
But let's start at the beginning.
In his submission to the Challenge, Kalair wrote that he'd established Usuryfree
Money (UM) Financial Inc. in 2004.
"As a start up financial company
serving a mainly immigrant community, we are faced with many challenges. For
the conventional financial industry, our concepts and products are foreign and
difficult to understand."
Kalair was undeterred.
Born in
He's married with two children. His wife
has a psychology degree and helps him with UM Financial. He believes that
second-generation Muslims like himself want to integrate into Canadian society
and be good Canadians while maintaining their Muslim identity.
In 1996, Kalair
graduated from
"There was a lot of division among
different sects and ethnic backgrounds. Muslims come from all over the world,
from different cultures. We organized the first Muslim Day at
Kalair doesn't believe in withdrawing from society. On the topic of
"extremist elements," he says that most societies have small groups
of malcontents who are extremist in one direction or
another. "You can't say all Irish people belonged to the IRA. In the same
way, most Muslims are peaceful."
Kalair lives in
"About half are Indo-Pakistani,
including
As we talk, young boys kneel on the
floor at benches, rocking back and forth in the main prayer hall, chanting,
memorizing the Koran, learning Arabic. The class will go on for 75 minutes.
Restless children are made to stand in
the corner, or isolated on the carpet. They're part of the Islamic Foundation's
school, which has 500 full-time and 600 part-time students from junior
kindergarten to grade 12.
The foundation is also a centre for
social services, and provides a free lunch every Saturday to 500 people,
including non-Muslims.
The school's administrator, Shakil Akhter, is a personal
client of UM Financial. Delighted that he was able to purchase a home in
accordance with Shariah requirements, he says it's
important to him that his monthly mortgage payment, as it would be deemed by a
mainstream bank, is a "rental payment."
Few of Kalair's
clients understand how difficult it was to devise such a seemingly simple
approach. While working at Hewlett-Packard and Airmiles
Loyalty Group, he put together a business plan and spent two years knocking on
doors at 70 financial institutions before finding an interested potential
partner at Credit Union Central of Ontario.
That was in the summer of 2003, when the
door opened a crack at CUCO, followed by a full welcome with the arrival of
Jens Lohmueller in December that year. CUCO's manager of product development and commercial
lending, Lohmueller had left his native Germany in
1991 to continue a degree in economics at the University of Western Ontario –
in pursuit, actually, of the Canadian woman who would become his wife.
He went on to do a masters degree at the
By the end of 2003, he'd landed at CUCO,
and was open to Kalair's approach.
"I came here as an immigrant and I
know what it's like to feel that you're stuck," Lohmueller
says. "I thought, we'll
try. Credit unions are here to be more involved in the
community." As well, he knew that HSBC was doing Islamic banking in the
He grappled with Kalair's
challenge, to provide financial products without interest. Which
meant structuring the process in a different way – that would in the end
deliver the same rate of return to the Credit Union.
Says Kalair:
"We told CUCO we'd bring them the clients. We knew there was a demand, we
had hundreds of people ..."
"But the challenge was the
ownership of the house," Lohmueller says.
"It took a long time to figure out how to structure the deal and comply
with the regulatory requirements."
"So that it was acceptable to our
community and scholars," Kalair says.
Eventually,
after many months of figuring – "it was like an obstacle course," Lohmueller says – they structured the deal as an equity
investment in each house. UM Financial buys the property, with funds from CUCO;
the purchaser's name goes on the title to the property. The purchaser
contributes a down payment and pays a monthly rental fee equivalent to a
mortgage fee. (If the mortgage interest rate is 5.5 per cent, the UM
Financial/CUCO rental rate is 6.1 per cent.)
The
rental profit is split between CUCO and UM Financial, which has received close
to $100 million from CUCO to finance about 400 home purchases. Each transaction
is done with the full documentation typical of any real estate deal. (There are
strict new regulations in place preventing money laundering; UM Financial does
not accept deposits or investments.)
The
credit union network has attracted thousands of new customers, with the
McMaster Savings & Credit Union in
"The
goal is to get more deposits from the (Muslim) community and recycle this money
into UM mortgages," Kalair says.
Eager to expand UM Financial's
range of offerings and source of funds – the firm has eight branches throughout
Hopefully, we'll be able to reveal the
name of the bank before the Challenge concludes at the end of April.
Kalair is on a roll. He's embarked on a PhD in Islamic Economics Finance,
is becoming known in international circles and recently spoke at an Islamic
Finance Forum in
This week, he's in
The
only (minor) disappointment is that he tried to advertise UM Financial on
CBC-TV's hit new sitcom, Little Mosque on
the Prairie, but the show's so popular "the initial slots were
all sold out."
Follow the Star's
2007 Build a Business Challenge every Monday until the end of April. Check out
our blog at thestar.com/challenge and meet Tasha Mazza-Kelton, MBA, principal of Mezzanine Consulting.
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