KUCHING: Maybank Islamic Bhd (Maybank Islamic), the Islamic banking arm of the Maybank Group, has introduced its latest offering – Maybank Islamic Custody Services for the benefit of syariah-conscious clients, both domestic and abroad.
The establishment of Maybank Islamic Custody Services will leverage on the existing footprint and expertise of Maybank Islamic Services and capitalising on the bank’s capabilities.
Maybank Islamic will be targeting prospective clients such as the Government-linked Companies (GLCs) in Malaysia, fund management companies, institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds, which in total would have an estimated asset under management of about RM1.4 trillion.
“This latest services helps to complete Maybank’s suite of Islamic financial offerings. This is in line with the group’s vision to be a regional financial services leader and is part of the group’s strategy to be Asean’s leading Islamic bank by 2015,” said Maybank Group head, Global Banking Amirul Feisal Wan Zahir.
He noted that as a leading banking group in the country with one of the highest credit ratings, the group is the local specialist in providing custodial services. Amirul Feisal said this in his speech at the Islamic Custody launch here on Thursday, which was attended by existing clients of the Maybank Group.
Also present at the launch was Maybank Islamic chief executive officer Muzaffar Hisham who said that in view of the thriving increase in global Islamic assets and the rising affluence of Muslim communities, establishing an Islamic Custody Services provider completes the Islamic asset servicing cycle.
“Global Islamic fund and wealth management are on the rise, underpinned by strong demand from Muslim and also non-Muslim investors.
“This has no doubt, become the pivotal factor in the growth of the industry,” he said.
Muzaffar said that Maybank Islamic Custody Services also has the capability of monitoring non-syariah compliant securities should clients accidentally purchase them or should the syariah compliant securities subsequently deemed non-syariah compliant.
“Under custody services, via our fully automated safe-custody system, it makes the post-trade and also semi-annually periodic screening a systematic process, to ensure we are able to notify our client in the most accurate and timely fashion in the event any securities has ceased to comply with syariah principles.
“Any non-compliant income would be donated to charitable bodies,” he said.
The most common forms of syariah compliant investment funds are equity funds, real estate funds and money market funds.
With the launch of the Islamic Custody Services, the Maybank group is now able to provide its clients an array of syariah compliant investment services solutions including global custody, sub-custody, fund accounting and administration, transfer agency as well as trustee.