Autarky Capital, whose SPV, Autarky Sukuk, recently launched its inaugural Sukuk program, is looking to introduce a few new Islamic finance products to the UK market in the next few years. NESSREEN TAMANO has the exclusive.
This includes longer tenors on Shariah financing facilities, commercial bridging and mortgaging, Yasin Patel, the co-founder of Autarky, told IFN.
“We may look into other business models and other lending products as well. That could include trade finance and working capital finance,” added Shoaib Bux, the co-founder of the company. “There are a lot of avenues we could go down, but currently, we are just going to have a phase-based approach and see how the business grows organically.”
In September 2023, Autarky launched a Sukuk facility worth GBP1 billion (US$1.22 billion), the proceeds from which the firm will use to offer Shariah compliant real estate bridge construction loans to corporate customers.
The Sukuk facility, which is, as of this writing, still open for subscription, invests in real estate assets solely in the UK. “We look for liquidity in our assets, those that are easy to sell in the auction, has demand, a large buyer pool, etc. Typically, in terms of our profit coupons, we pay an average of between 8% to 10% per annum,” Shoaib shared.
“We are quite early in our journey here in the Sukuk space, and in the UK, there hasn’t been many Sukuk offerings accessible to Muslims. So at the moment, it’s a bit more of an ‘education piece’ that we are offering, but the conversations we have had have been quite fruitful so far. We have some investors being onboarded as we speak, and the return is quite healthy; an average is between 8% to 10%, but it can range from 7% to 12%,” Yasin added.
This is an excerpt of an interview with Yasin Patel and Shoaib Bux, the co-founders of UK-based Autarky Capital, about the Sukuk and Islamic investing markets in the UK. Listen to the full discussion on IFN Podcast.
