Jason talks to Mohamad Sawwaf, Co-founder and CEO of Manzil. Manzil is a Canadian-based Islamic banking and finance platform. In today’s episode, he is going to talk about Islamic finance and how he is using Fintech as a platform for distributing Islamic finance in schools. 

Episode Highlights:

• 1.15: Manzil was created to fill the gap of the 1.6 million Muslims here in Canada to get into homeownership and wealth management solutions and start to build their wealth for the first time.
• 5.05: No one is talking about any desire to circumvent the tax code. It is to recognize that the tax code is designed to allow certain things like home purchases to happen in a way that is not going to be punitive from a tax perspective, says Jason. 
• 8.27: Murabaha is a cost-plus situation. Therefore, this is the number one stipulation for entering into these transactions or focusing on asset-backed or asset-based transactions.
• 11.00: There is a massive misconception about recourse on the asset. If you have an asset that hasn’t fully paid off, you have full recourse on that asset. Sell it off, make yourself whole again, and give it back to the client whatever is left. There’s nothing wrong with that, says Sawwaf.
• 17.54: Jason asks, what else is lacking in the current ecosystem that needs to be brought to the table for people who need to borrow or operate in a whole all manner? 
• 19.35: Funding and capital attraction into programs is a genuine big concern that we’re still solving. We do have access to retail-based capital, but at the institutional level, we need to get that good cost in place and launch this at scale, says Sawwaf.
• 22.40: The endowment fund is the largest globally, and one of my friend who went to Harvard was getting a loan from the endowment fund. But the rules around him paying back are super egregious. So you cannot pay this back early even if you want to.

3 Key Points

1. When you think about Islamic financial solutions, there is a religious component to how these structures are derived and executed in the marketplace. We can go over the theory, and in theory, everything sounds fine, says Sawwaf.
2. 16.01: We are a 100% digital platform. This is the only way to penetrate our community across the country without establishing bricks and mortar, retail branches, or offices that the typical financial institution would do, explains Sawwaf.
3. There are so many advisors down there who specialize in dealing with student debt because every program in a word for forgiveness has all kinds of complexities. 

Tweetable Quotes

• “You can’t take money from me because money lending in Islam is not a commodity. You can’t earn money from money, and it’s not allowed.” - Mohamad Sawwaf
• “Christianity got around the usury laws within the Bible, which was to discount bonds originally.” – Jason
• “Talk to me about the risk mitigation for the non-primary party in diminishing Musharakah or declining balance type of transaction.” – Jason

Resources Mentioned:

• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• Woodgate.com – Sponsor
• Mohamad Sawwaf: Website 

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