2021 digital solutions for the Islamic financing sector
Sedania As Salam Capital Sdn. Bhd. (SASC), a technology provider that empowers financial institutions with Islamic fintech solutions, is banking on an expected digital boom in 2021 as a result of the second movement control order (MCO 2.0) enacted by the government early this year.
CEO Nisa Ismail said the COVID-19 pandemic had presented itself as an essential catalyst for Malaysian financial services, especially in bank digitalisation.
“For Sedania As Salam Capital (SASC), we know that Malaysia’s Islamic Financing landscape is ready for a digital boost in transforming the conventional Islamic transaction banking to suit a new era of digitisation,” she added.
2020 performance review
Over the years, SASC has served over 70 financial institutions with more than RM50 billion loans processed to-date, projecting growth in the demand for digital solutions in Islamic financial services. This demand is expected to continue for some time, considering the shift in digital behaviour towards banking habits post the first round of MCO.
Their As-Sidq Tawarruq platform has transacted over 500,000 customers in getting shariah-compliant based financing products across all partners, strengthening their position in the Islamic financing scenery as the only digital commodity provider in Tawarruq. SASC enjoyed a healthy gross profit margin for its financial year 2020 (FY20), mainly attributable to the company being the first fintech player that has developed a full application programming interface (API) enabled Tawarruq platform in helping its partners to facilitate loan processing in real-time, allowing room for optimisation of the platform for other Islamic products.
According to Nisa, 2020 has given SASC opportunities to accelerate the upgrade of their partners’ legacy infrastructure, simultaneously future-proofing their systems in facilitating new growth for the digitization of banking.
“Despite the pandemic, we have managed to test out one of our new offerings for 2021, the GO Halal Program, which is expected to benefit the credit communities with KPKT license. We have also expanded our technology partnerships on e-KYC, Core Banking SAAS, and Middleware API for the Digital Banking Platform,” added Nisa.
Outlook for 2021
As most banks take a somewhat futuristic stance in digital transformation, consumers will increasingly enjoy decentralised access to everything within it – a new normal of sorts that presents game-changing opportunities.
“Our mantra for 2021 is to ‘refocus and grow’ where we will nurture our strategic alliances for the GO Halal Program through our Credit Community Partners with Takaful and e-Mandate offerings. We want to bridge the gap between digital consumption behaviors and legacy infrastructure,” she added.
The platform module for SASC’s digital banking solutions is composable and flexible, equipped with full API integration, to complement the traditional financial markets in this digital era.
The outlook for Islamic financing transactions is undoubtedly bright in the context of this new digital era, especially for financial service institutions that adopted digital acquisition.
