10 Dec, 2017National Bank of Fujairah joins Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform for enhanced and efficient Islamic financing

National Bank of Fujairah (NBF) announced today that it has joined Nasdaq Dubai’s rapidly expanding Islamic financing Murabaha platform, which offers unique advantages to financial institutions and clients seeking Sharia’a-compliant solutions and trading opportunities.

NBF is the first conventional bank to join the Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform since the platform’s launch in 2014. The bank rolled out its Sharia’a-compliant window NBF Islamic in 2014 and has recently expanded its activities to include a comprehensive suite of Sharia’a-compliant services.

The bank’s strategic priorities focus on developing NBF Islamic into a full-fledged proposition encompassing a comprehensive range of solutions for both retail and corporate banking segments. The Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform is a step further in that direction and will play a key role for NBF in facilitating Islamic financing transactions in an efficient and streamlined manner.

Recognised as a trusted and reliable banking partner in the UAE, NBF offers best-in-class solutions in diverse areas spanning corporate and commercial banking, trade finance, and treasury. A few years after its inception, NBF Islamic is already leaving its mark in the market and has been recently named the "Sharia’a-compliant Window of the Year" at The Banker’s Islamic Bank of the Year Awards 2017.

Vince Cook, Chief Executive Officer at NBF, said: "We are very excited about joining the Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform; the move underlines our commitment to offering reliable and efficient Islamic finance services to our clients. The innovative platform complements our existing offerings as we seek to fulfil our clients’ growing needs in this space. It enables our clients to conduct transactions quickly and efficiently at a fixed cost and in a transparent manner – all within an environment that provides the certainty of Sharia’a-compliance."

Hamed Ali, Chief Executive of Nasdaq Dubai, said: "As a prominent UAE financial institution dedicated to supporting businesses and individuals, National Bank of Fujairah is an important addition to our Murabaha platform. Our collaboration reflects the increasing participation of conventional financial institutions in the field of Islamic finance and as the market grows, Nasdaq Dubai will attract more conventional as well as Islamic financial institutions to participate on it, both regionally and internationally."

The Nasdaq Dubai Murabaha Platform can provide significant cost savings and a reduction in processing time for its participants, and is playing a growing role in Dubai’s expansion as the global capital of the Islamic economy.

Since its launch in 2014, over 76 billion US dollars worth of transactions have been executed through the platform. Transactions valued at 26 billion US dollars have taken place so far in 2017, up 18% from 22.1 billion US dollars in the same period last year.