BAHRAIN. The Bahrain Financial Exchange (BFX), the first multi-asset exchange in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, is delighted to announce the launch of its Islamic Finance division with the establishment of ‘Bait Al Bursa’ marking the creation of the region’s first exchange operated platform dedicated to Islamic finance products.

As the BFX is focused on bringing new and innovative financial products and services to the market, it has established its Bait Al Bursa division to offer Shariah compliant solutions to a wide range of regional and international participants. Bait Al Bursa, signifies the “Home of Exchanges”, and represents the BFX’s vision of providing a single venue for all exchange traded business in the Islamic finance sector.

As part of Bait Al Bursa’s initial product offering, this Islamic division will introduce a fully electronic Shariah-compliant platform, e-Tayseer for automating Murabaha transactions, which is a significant milestone for Shariah-compliant trading in the Middle East. 

e-Tayseer has been built with the regional MENA market in mind ensuring that its underlying assets are identifiable, and the process flow is fully Shariah-compliant addressing some of the issues in the market today. 

e-Tayseer offers financial institutions the option to purchase assets directly from asset suppliers to be used for their Murabaha liquidity management transactions in a secure online environment. 

With advanced automated features, e-Tayseer will make scheduling and execution of Murabaha transactions more streamlined and afford its users the benefit of reduced trade cycles and manual paperwork procedures.

Commenting on the announcement, Arshad Khan, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of the BFX and the BCDC, said, “We are delighted to introduce Bait Al Bursa as an important milestone in the robust growth of the exchange and its commitment to fulfill the growing demand for sophisticated financial products across the Islamic market.”

The BFX has sought Rating Intelligence to issue a Fatwa authorizing both Bait Al Bursa’s platform as well as e-Tayseer.  Furthermore, Mr. Khan added: “To meet the needs of a very demanding market, e-Tayseer is the first of many exciting Islamic financial products we will introduce on Bait Al Bursa. We would like to thank the Shariah Advisors for their direction and support in bringing e-Tayseer to the market”.

The BFX have started a market engagement program to meet with key Murabaha market participants in the region to explain the features of the e-Tayseer platform and to sign them as registered users of the platform. The market response is very encouraging and the BFX is confident in generating significant participation on its e-Tayseer platform upon its commencement. 

MIDDLE EAST BUSINESS COMMENT & ANALYSIS

• Top news
• Business News
• Company News