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Best Islamic bank in the Middle East Best Islamic Bank in Saudi Arabia |
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Best Islamic bank in the Middle East
Al Rajhi remains the right bank for the times: conservative, smart, comprehensive. There might be a time when the Middle East award goes to a house with bigger and more daring regional ideas, but today what Islamic finance in the region needs is stability and an admirable focus on doing the basic things well.
That’s not to say Al Rajhi is devoid of innovation; far from it. The Jabal Omar $1.33 billion ijarah mawsufah fi zimmah financing, for which Al Rajhi is the exclusive financial adviser, is a real estate landmark, anchoring the $6 billion Jabal Omar hospitality development near the Grand Mosque in Mecca, a vast deal requiring an innovative structure to deal with the complex land-title structures in Saudi Arabia’s holy cities. Al Rajhi devised an Islamic land-lease and asset ownership structure involving the safeguarding, but not the transfer, of title deeds by a Saudi-owned security agent, sufficient to give lenders comfort while remaining on the right side of sensitive Mecca property law.
Best Islamic Bank in Saudi Arabia
Al Rajhi is clearly a leader in Saudi Arabia; its 500 branches and tahweel (remittances transfer) centres, 3,100 ATMs and 25,000 point-of-sale locations are peerless among the pure Islamic banks in the kingdom. Its total assets stood at SR247.2 billion ($65.9 billion) on September 30, with net income of SR5.97 billion for the three quarters to that date up 9% year on year, underpinned by a loyal customer deposit base (SR195 billion) and loan book. But Al Rajhi combines the heft of the main bank with the agility of its Al Rajhi Capital arm. This is among the leaders across the board from investment banking to asset management, brokerage and research businesses in the country.
Offices in Kuwait and Jordan, in addition to the well-established Malaysia business, have taken Al Rajhi farther afield, but Saudi will remain its bedrock. It has not been the easiest year for Al Rajhi internationally: the US Senate report into HSBC in July repeated old claims about Al Rajhi having links to terrorist financing. But unlike some other banks in the region, Al Rajhi took the criticism head on, with chief executive Suliman Abdulaziz Azzabin issuing a formal statement emphatically denying it had ever had any such connections.
