Liquidity Management
At the very core of Eiger is our commodity supply business. We provide intermediary services to Islamic financial institutions globally, offering a diverse range of Sharia'a-compliant liquidity management solutions in UK, Europe, MENA, GCC and SE Asia, to meet both the short and long-term liquidity needs of our clients.
The top 20 Islamic Banks globally have grown substantially in the last 5 years. We are meeting this increased demand with faster and more efficient services, with an extensive and diverse range of assets made available to our wholesale clients each day.
We don't just facilitate, we also innovate within this space. We are teaming up with a front-end banking software provider to allow straight-through processes (STP) for booking asset orders for Murabaha transactions through front-end core banking systems. This solution will increase the speed, accuracy and efficiency of booking Murabaha trades by reducing operational burdens and human error.
Retail/e-Banking
For retail banking products, we use locally-based commodity assets, linking the banking needs of the consumer, to the local economy. This gives additional Sharia'a comfort that all commodities exist, can be visited in situ, and can be physically delivered should the purchaser wish, as per the strict stipulations of the Murabaha contract.
We have recently combined our retail product with a leading bank in Saudi Arabia, to offer the world's first 24/7 mobile banking app offering real-time commodity murabaha for term deposits and personal financing for their retail client base.
We believe that this is the future of the Islamic retail banking space. Our research has shown that clients in the Middle East and SE Asia are the most tech-savvy globally, and with that comes an expectation for the very latest in technology and service. Competition amongst Islamic banks has grown significantly as the industry as a whole has expanded, and banks are increasingly looking to differentiate themselves by improving their retail product offering.
For more information please visit the Technology page of this website or contact us.
Structured Finance/Derivatives
We provide intermediary asset facilitation and advisory services to support sophisticated Sharia'a-compliant structured products and derivatives, including:
- Profit Rate Swaps
- Cross Currency Swaps
- Target Redemption Forwards
- And other Sharia'a-compliant hedging and financing structures.
To assist our clients' in the booking and processing of these transactions, we offer an integrated Middle and Back Office enhancement to our Trading Platform, ETP Client Reach, which is a bespoke module that can be tailored precisely to our client's existing requirements and infrastructure.
It is designed to facilitate and automate the typical operational procedures associated with Murabaha-based financial structures. ETP Client Reach provides seamless straight-through-processing, encompassing documentation and settlement to alleviate operational bottlenecks and volume constraints faced by Corporate and Investment Banking clients who trade and originate Islamic structured deposit, investment and derivative products.
ETP Client Reach allows our bank clients to process and manage the entire end to end Islamic transaction for multiple lines of business, including creation and distribution of all customer confirmations as well as broker confirmations, across a wide range of financial products that require underlying commodity.
Property/Real Estate Finance
We supply assets to support various structured Islamic financing transactions, including a revolving murabaha finance facility for a large GCC-based property developer.
The Islamic real-estate finance space is a growing sector, and we are seeing an increase in Sharia'a-complaint financing of commercial and residential real estate facilities across Europe in particular.
Trade Finance
Trade finance is the provision of liquidity to producers, traders (intermediaries) and end-users.
In conventional trade finance, two distinct asset classes exist:
a) Finance secured against the underlying "goods",
b) Finance secured upon the credit standing of the obligor which may or may not be enhanced by a bank guarantee or insurance policy.
Eiger, with specialist knowledge in the trade finance sector, uses the emphasis of Islamic finance on the underlying goods and physical ownership to:
* help create liquidity for each party and at each stage of the transaction by using the ownership of the underlying goods with pre/post credit enhancement (e.g. letters of credit) as required;
* assist with letter of credit confirmation for letters of credit emanating from the Middle East and Islamic world using introductions to financial institutions that:
- have improved risk appetite based upon local knowledge;
- meet the risk criteria of EU/UK treasurers;
- have limited or no representation in the major financial centres outside of the MENA Region.
* arrange, with or without recourse, finance of receivables with emphasis on the import of commodities into the Middle East and Islamic world evidenced by:
- promissory notes (PN) or bills of exchange (BE).
- deferred payment obligations between 30-180 days.
* make introductions to financial institutions for finance of inventory held at point of sale:
- taking advantage of the economies of bulk shipment,
- using local banks to avoid strain on existing banking facilities,
- uses Islamic structures to ensure security of ownership.
As an alternative to traditional stock finance, Eiger is able to arrange for the sale and repurchase of inventory by Islamic financial institutions.
