Economic and societal systems constantly evolve as the needs and demands of society change. With the development of new technologies, research, and discoveries, various opportunities emerge for venture development and developing economies.
Crowdfunding and sustainable urban development in emerging economies is an important topic related to the current issues in the rise of new platforms for digital activities, a collaborative economy, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and other activities that are shaping developing countries. In an exclusive cover interview with BUSINESS LIFE reporter, Ayman Amin Sejiny, Chief Executive Officer of the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD), highlights a range of pertinent topics, such as infrastructure finance, sustainable investment, and urban sustainability.
Sejiny became ICD’s CEO in September 2018, bringing with him a wealth of banking experience including executive legal roles at Ibdar Bank, Bank Al Khair, Barclays Capital Saudi Arabia, Samba Bank and Saudi Hollandi Bank. Sejiny has also acted as board member on behalf of Open-Silicon, Bahrain Financing Company Group and Unicorn Investment Bank. Sejiny holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Eastern Michigan University, USA.
Since joining the ICD, Sejiny has already made his presence felt, and ICD has taken on an impressively forward-facing focus with a special concentration on growing areas including fintech, inclusiveness, sustainability and commercial progress. Innovation towards the sustainable development is one of the biggest ongoing strategies of the ICD, and a key focus for Sejiny.
ICD, as the private sector arm of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), has a vital role to play in this future — and with a dynamic leader at its helm; 2019 and 2020 seem to be busy and promising years for the organization. ICD.
ICD offers a broad range of advisory solutions, direct investment, indirect financing via local and regional financial institutions, asset management services in 54 member countries across the globe.
BL: What are the major achievements and activities of ICD during 2019?
Ayman A. Sejiny: In 2019, as per our mandate, ICD has provided financing to several financial institutions in our member countries, and also selectively invested in some corporates for directly support them in business growth. As you know, last April during the IsDB Group Annual Meeting in Morocco, we launched a new platform project as an initiative and an additional way for our partners, the financial institutions, to interact and do business in the more efficient and collaborative way. With this, we aim for a high degree of integration in our product mix to serve the needs of our FI network and the private sector, allowing for increased cross-selling and integrated client relationship management.
We are also in the phase of executing our new corporate strategy for the institution. A strategy that has been reviewed and approved by our board of directors, focusing on the following 5 strategic pillars:
a) Focus our core on financial institutions; b) Implement new innovative products and channels; c) Grow the business in a financially sustainable way; d) Serve member countries based on their development needs; and e) Deepen our collaboration within IsDB Group and other IFIs and partners.
In 2019, we adjusted our product range and advisory solutions by focusing our offerings along the five-key pillar of strategy. This basically involved, discontinuing certain products, repositioning current offerings, as well as amending our product portfolio with new and innovative products and services. In general, this year we went through phases and some new initiatives are on their way moving forward. We are constantly assessing the relevance of our products and services and trying not to lose momentum and leverage the business with our partners and clients.
BL: What about crowdfunding and your recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Kuala Lumpur that you signed with IAP Integrated Sdn Bhd?
Ayman A. Sejiny: We are very much interested in conducting more fintech solutions transactions like crowdfunding. We will able to assist our member countries in their developmental projects. The MoU came as a result of an ongoing discussion about future collaboration, between ICD and IAP Integrated since the 22nd of January 2019 during the visit of the IAP Integrated’s management team to ICD’s office in Kuala Lumpur.
ICD is pleased to be the first organization that IAP Integrated turns to in an effort to market its crowdfunding fintech solutions to other major Islamic markets such as Central Asia and Africa, in addition to the traditional Islamic markets in the Arab regions. We believe that this collaboration will enhance our reputation as a trusted long-term partner towards contributing to the development of the economies of our member countries through private sector development.
BL: How does 2020 look like and whether ICD is well prepared to operate successfully?
Ayman A. Sejiny: We do have optimistic views and prospects. We believe that the development institutions must continue focusing their businesses particularly in less developed and difficult geographies. There will undoubtedly, be challenges like any other years to consider. Ups and downs are there but we have our own internal risk department that monitors our business. We have also our strategy and research team that is constantly monitoring what is happening globally and regionally. As you know, we are a quite agile and dynamic institution. We keep evolving according to the prevailing needs, but we are definitely in markets where things need to be constantly improving. The demographics in our markets might have bigger challenges. The demographics are young, excited and they are hard working. They have ways of looking at the world in a very optimistic way and that is the nature of the young generations globally. I think that is what benefits us to collaborate with them and find ways of keeping that excitement in place.
BL: What are the special plans or strategies that you would like to implement during the 2020?
Ayman A. Sejiny: Here, I would like to provide you with a broader picture. In addition to our traditional investment activities, which we will continue undertaking, we are also targeting the large-ticket size projects through Sukuk issuance in capital markets instruments because we believe the world needs much bigger development financing. If we all combine our efforts as multilateral development institutions, we will barely be able to invest around US$ 200 billion. Thus, the gap is huge and one of the smart ways to close this gap is to go to the debit and equity capital markets where we can mobilize more funding from commercial and institutional investors. We are also very keen to do green Sukuk that would be focusing on green projects that are contributing to sustainable development of our member countries.
Moreover, we will continue focusing on SMEs development, through our line of finance offering that proved to be very successful since day one. Thanks to the this offering, the financial institutions can assist SMEs on the ground, as they know them much better than we do; they are much closer to the client than we are; they can disperse the funds much better than we can; they can collect the funds much better than we can and that will be enough at least it needs to be taken to the right regulatory records, they would do a better job.
Finally, the BRAVE and BRAVE Women programs, are where ICD focuses on fragile and instable markets and geographies to help the local communities, particularly SMEs to do business, become resilient and succeed during these very difficult times.
BL: Does ICD provide its financial services to non-Muslim countries?
Ayman A. Sejiny: ICD’s mandate is to provide Shari’ah compliant solutions to help develop the private sector in our member countries. We can be equally active in non-Muslim countries as well, just as long as our interventions bring value addition and benefit to our member countries or Muslim communities in non-member countries. In this regard, we are not bound with any religion or geographic circumstances, and strive to contribute to the global agenda on sustainable development through our private sector development activities.
BL: What are the recent updates on Saudi Arabia and how do you see Saudi Arabia is going to meet 2020? What are your comments on Saudi Arabia’s planned transformation that is going in parallel with ICD’s transformation?
Ayman A. Sejiny: I believe Saudi Arabia has been successful in attracting a lot of direct investments both internally and externally. Moreover, the country has now opened its market to more SMEs and private sector to conduct their businesses. The Saudi market is welcoming new ideas and shifting to creative and futuristic solutions in general. There is a new positive evolution going on and I feel proud to witness all these in our host country.
We also see some policy actions and reforms in terms of diversifying the economy away from the oil industry. Moreover, I think a stabilization effort in the oil markets globally is the most suitable strategy and Saudi Arabia, like other countries, is keen to always have a stable and evolving market. Nevertheless, transformation journey starts yielding concrete results and we start observing a lot improvement in multiple areas of the economy, being labor and capital markets, governance and institutions, manufacturing and tourism etc. As our host country and major shareholder, we try to be relevant and pro-active in this transformation journey by closely involving in and supporting various initiatives.
BL: What are the present and the future challenges for ICD in the geographies it is operating and how do you plan to address them?
Ayman A. Sejiny: Overall, I think one of the biggest challenges we have is to implement as much as possible the financial technology that can help us better serve our member countries. Being technologically sound and operationally innovative would also allow us to reach out to those communities and beneficiaries that others fail to reach. With the help of advanced technology and constant innovation, we aim at breaking those barriers and becoming accessible to each Muslim that needs our help or support.
We are also exploring ways to re-open the debt markets and equity capital markets into our capabilities and benefit from them in order to further expand the services and be part of closing the gap between what is needed in developments globally and what we can provide now. With this we aim at catalyzing, mobilizing and channeling more development resources of the commercial and institutional investors in the countries of our operation.
