Shariah-compliant banks have been urged to adopt a strategy to make effective use of financial technology, triggering substantial changes to global financial markets.
Ahmed Ali Siddiqui, director of Centre for Excellence in Islamic Finance at IBA, said at a seminar that Islamic finance industry has a share of 13.5% in Pakistan currently with 5 million Islamic finance customers from a figure of 110 million bankable customers. We have 40 million potential mobile-using customers among that 110.
“For Islamic finance, there has to be a strategy for Islamic finance in the digital world to take benefit from the technological advancements in changing market,” he added.
Ashar Nazim, a fintech expert and managing director of Finocracy talked about the changing industry dynamics and beginning of a new era with the prevalence of fintech. Nazim said that Pakistan is doing remarkably well in the Islamic finance ground. Many Pakistanis are leading the Islamic finance institutions but have to adapt to fintech.
He explained that fintech is doing two things; it is making access to financial technologies making it simpler and convenient and provides a level-playing field to every player in the industry to make it big or small. Market Link Executive Director Ishan Kanji said that fintech use will also support agricultural sector by easy access to loans and facilities to farmers.
Hasan Bilgrami, CEO of BankIslami, said, “Technology is an enabler, you can do anything you want with the technology.” He shared the success story of BankIslami being the first bank in Pakistan to use biometric technology.