r/TowerHamlets

I have formally studied Islamic finance, gained qualifications in it, and currently work in the industry part time as a university student. As far as the industry has come in the past few years I've noticed that there's still a big gap between what's out there and what people actually want.

For instance, I've noticed a lot of push back towards Islamic stock screening. For those who don't already know, a stock is considered Halal by the most standards in the industry if the interest bearing debt is <30% of market cap, cash and interest bearing securities is <30% of market cap, and impermissible (gambling, alcohol etc etc) revenues are <5% of revenues. This seems to get a noticeable amount of push back both here and more broadly amongst Islamic finance consumers. Namely because it doesn't differentiate between a company that behaves ethically and one who may be involved in things like forced labour and other activities against Islamic moral standards.

I have made a first attempt at a solution. I released a free screening tool which uses the traditional screen for the total pass or fail criteria (it's made by scholars and I am not one so I won't redesign the compliance criteria) but on top of this it scores the companies on a scale of whether they behave ethically. It does this by finding reputable citations of un-ethical actions (weighed by severity and how long ago it was, e.g. an anti-trust violation 30 years ago isn't given as large of a penalty as being found to use forced labour last month). It also looks for client relationships with impermissible companies if they can be verified which is sometimes tricky because this often isn't disclosed.

This is the tool ( https://rihaliq.com ) it currently works for over 5,200 stocks and reads directly from regulatory filings. I would love some feedback on what people would like to see. I am trying to make it into a full Islamic investing platform so I would love to hear about features people actually want from the industry. This can range from changes to the screening methodology or ways you want the screening applied.

One thing I'm trying to solve is showing good Halal opportunities without giving unlicensed investment advice. I'm currently working on tracking top fund managers investments and showing the compliant ones to people, is this something people would like to see or would something else be more useful to you? Happy to implement anything of use.

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