Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo, Pe­ter Christo­pher

In a move to re­shape the fi­nan­cial land­scape of T&T, First­line Se­cu­ri­ties Ltd is launch­ing the na­tion’s first-ever Sharīʿah com­pli­ant pri­vate place­ment, in­de­pen­dent­ly cer­ti­fied by a qual­i­fied Is­lam­ic fi­nan­cial schol­ar.

This ini­tia­tive, cham­pi­oned by chair­man Kei­th King, is not mere­ly a niche of­fer­ing but a strate­gic ef­fort to in­tro­duce eth­i­cal, as­set-based fi­nanc­ing to a wider seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, there­by fos­ter­ing eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and in­clu­sive­ness.

King un­der­scored the sig­nif­i­cance of this ven­ture, not­ing that pre­vi­ous at­tempts at es­tab­lish­ing Is­lam­ic trusts in the coun­try had failed.

“We are do­ing it the right way,” King stat­ed, em­pha­sis­ing that First­line Se­cu­ri­ties has trained its staff and se­cured the nec­es­sary Sharīʿah cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to en­sure ab­solute com­pli­ance with Is­lam­ic law.

The core of this of­fer­ing lies in its ad­her­ence to the prin­ci­ples of Is­lam­ic fi­nanc­ing, or what King prefers to call eth­i­cal fi­nanc­ing.

This mod­el fun­da­men­tal­ly re­jects the con­cept of in­ter­est (ri­ba), in­stead pro­mot­ing shared risk and prof­its.

“It’s as­set-based fi­nanc­ing. It’s re­al fi­nanc­ing, re­al things, rather than just mon­ey things, fi­nanc­ing re­al things. It does not get in­volved with in­ter­est. It is a shar­ing of risk and prof­its, both the in­vestor and the per­son who wants ac­cess to mon­ey come in­to part­ner­ship, so to speak, and they share the risk and the re­wards of the busi­ness,” King ex­plained.

He high­light­ed that this shar­ing of risk is a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor, as it nat­u­ral­ly tends to sta­bilise a busi­ness and, by ex­ten­sion, the econ­o­my.

The chair­man ar­tic­u­lat­ed a vi­sion where a larg­er per­cent­age of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion is ac­tive­ly in­volved in the econ­o­my, mov­ing be­yond a tra­di­tion­al ‘them and us’ view of busi­ness own­er­ship.

He ar­gues that by mo­bil­is­ing cap­i­tal that may oth­er­wise be ly­ing dor­mant in fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, the place­ment of­fers a crit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty for wealth gen­er­a­tion.

“That is what we want to do. We want to mo­bilise that cap­i­tal that is ly­ing there and avail­able to give you a ben­e­fit from it, rather than it stay in a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion and earn­ing rates of in­ter­est that may not be sat­is­fac­to­ry. If you want to re­al­ly be­come wealthy, re­al­ly you should be in busi­ness. That is one of the ways of of gen­er­at­ing wealth,” King as­sert­ed.

While start­ing a busi­ness may not be fea­si­ble for every­one, par­tic­i­pat­ing in this in­vest­ment al­lows in­di­vid­u­als to gain an own­er­ship stake in the pro­duc­tive and in­no­v­a­tive sec­tors of the coun­try.

He not­ed that in­stru­ments known as sukuks are al­so used in ma­jor fi­nan­cial cen­tres like Lon­don and Frank­furt, are hailed as a source of sta­ble, non-flighty cap­i­tal and are de­ployed specif­i­cal­ly to de­vel­op busi­ness­es and the coun­try, pro­vid­ing a ro­bust base for long-term growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

King said there had been at­tempts to in­tro­duce in­vest­ments guid­ed by Is­lam­ic fi­nanc­ing be­fore, but these were not suc­cess­ful. How­ev­er, First­line felt the prin­ci­ples of Is­lam­ic fi­nanc­ing could ap­peal to mem­bers of the pub­lic who are ei­ther un­able to in­vest through typ­i­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in T&T or do not be­lieve in their struc­tures.

“One of the beau­ties of the Is­lam­ic fi­nanc­ing, or the eth­i­cal fi­nanc­ing that we pre­fer to call it, I think, is the shar­ing of risk tends to sta­bi­lize a busi­ness and sta­bi­lize an econ­o­my. Our coun­try would be much bet­ter off if the large per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion is in­volved in the econ­o­my, they are in­volved in get­ting the re­turns, and they in­volved in tak­ing the risk, be­cause many peo­ple look at it as them and us in terms of busi­ness,” said the in­vest­ment ex­ec­u­tive.

He al­so not­ed that sev­er­al Is­lam­ic coun­tries who sub­scribed to this struc­ture were not as se­vere­ly ef­fect­ed by glob­al re­ces­sions and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic due to this ap­proach.

He said, “This brings peo­ple in­to the re­al econ­o­my, to take the risk of busi­ness along with peo­ple who are man­ag­ing busi­ness or in­vest­ing in things. That is what we want to do. We want to mo­bi­lize that cap­i­tal that is ly­ing there and avail­able to give you a ben­e­fit from it, rather than it stay­ing in a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion and earn­ing rates of in­ter­est that may not be sat­is­fac­to­ry.”

He hopes that the na­ture of the in­vest­ment would en­cour­age peo­ple scep­ti­cal of tak­ing risks through typ­i­cal in­vest­ment strate­gies would be swayed by the of­fer­ings, which are large­ly based in shared in­vest­ments in prop­er­ties, con­struc­tion or or us­ing work­ing cap­i­tal to se­cure prod­ucts for man­u­fac­ture goods.

On the is­sue of re­al es­tate and con­struc­tion, King said cap­i­tal could be pro­vid­ed for build­ing projects, such as com­mer­cial or fac­to­ries. This in­volves shar­ing the risk and re­ward be­tween the de­vel­op­er, the con­trac­tor, and the cap­i­tal providers

“It’s in­volved with do­ing re­al things, re­al con­struc­tion, tak­ing the risk and the re­ward and shar­ing it,” King re­it­er­at­ed.

He said, “This, if you want to re­al­ly be­come wealthy, re­al­ly you should be in busi­ness. That is one of the ways of of gen­er­at­ing wealth. Be­ing in­volved in busi­ness. You it may not be pos­si­ble for you your­self to start a busi­ness, but if you take some risk and put mon­ey in­to a busi­ness, you get the ben­e­fit of it. And it’s not just out there some­body else you you, you have an own­er­ship in the pro­duc­tive side of the coun­try, the in­no­v­a­tive side of the coun­try, the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tions that may take place in the coun­try.”

While the prod­uct is fun­da­men­tal­ly Sharīʿah-com­pli­ant, First­line Se­cu­ri­ties is ex­plic­it­ly tar­get­ing the wider com­mu­ni­ty, not just the Is­lam­ic pop­u­la­tion.

King ac­knowl­edged the his­tor­i­cal feel­ing of ex­clu­sion with­in the Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty from the tra­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of past cur­ren­cy changes.

How­ev­er, he stressed the uni­ver­sal ap­peal of the core prin­ci­ples.

“There are many peo­ple here who don’t be­lieve in in­ter­est, who be­lieve in putting mon­ey to work for pro­duc­tive pur­pos­es, and we want to at­tract them as well. So not on­ly peo­ple in the Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty, but the struc­tures that we have put in place have the cer­tifi­cate as be­ing Sharīʿah-com­pli­ant, but any­one could come in­to this,” King said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that the prin­ci­ples un­der­pin­ning Is­lam­ic fi­nance—shared risk, shared re­ward, trans­paren­cy, and deal­ing in re­al as­sets—are not ex­clu­sive to the Mus­lim faith, but res­onate with the fun­da­men­tal val­ues of hon­esty and fair­ness found in Chris­tian­i­ty, Hin­duism and Ju­daism.

“It’s in­clu­sive­ness. In­stead of keep­ing peo­ple on the out­side...it brings peo­ple in to the world of fi­nance and busi­ness. That’s one of the biggest fea­tures of it.”

Forex and ini­tial in­ter­est

When asked about the per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change chal­lenges in T&T, King clar­i­fied that the pro­gramme is not de­signed as a spe­cif­ic so­lu­tion to the FX cri­sis.

How­ev­er, its core prin­ci­ple of mo­bil­is­ing cap­i­tal for pro­duc­tive pur­pos­es is in­her­ent­ly ben­e­fi­cial.

“What I would say is that the mon­ey that is mo­bilised would go to­wards the pro­duc­tive sec­tor rather than be­ing put un­der the mat­tress, so to speak, or stashed in some bank and not be­ing used. One of the things with Is­lam­ic fi­nance is to use mon­ey and cap­i­tal for pro­duc­tive pur­pos­es. That’s our main prin­ci­ple. Mon­ey has to be for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple, ben­e­fit of the coun­try, ben­e­fit of the cor­po­ra­tion. It’s not some­thing that is just ly­ing around there and not serv­ing a pur­pose.” he said.

Ini­tial in­ter­est in the of­fer­ing has been “a lot,” though King ad­mit­ted there is a de­gree of con­cern to over­come, giv­en past un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts at sim­i­lar struc­tures in the lo­cal mar­ket. He re­it­er­at­ed that First­line Se­cu­ri­ties is ac­tive­ly en­gag­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and pro­mot­ing its cer­ti­fied, cor­rect ap­proach.

About First­line Se­cu­ri­ties Ltd

First­line Se­cu­ri­ties Ltd with its of­fice lo­cat­ed in In St James, at the cor­ner of Agra and Del­hi streets, is a pri­vate­ly held fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion based in T&T, with 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence help­ing clients grow and pro­tect their wealth, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s brochure.It is reg­u­lat­ed by the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC), and spe­cialis­es in cus­tom in­vest­ment so­lu­tions that meet the re­al needs of­busi­ness­es, fam­i­lies and in­sti­tu­tions.

The com­pa­ny stat­ed that it is known for its hands-on struc­tur­ing, care­ful risk man­age­ment, and trans­par­ent client re­la­tion­ships, not­ing that its fo­cus is not on push­ing prod­ucts—but on de­sign­ing fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions that make sense

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