Elaf Bank, a wholesale Islamic bank licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain, has become a registered user of one of the first multi-asset exchange in the Mena region, Bahrain Financial Exchange's (BFX) Islamic division, Bait Al Bursa.

Bait Al Bursa, an innovative and comprehensive platform, will complement the broad scope of Elaf Bank’s core business offerings. Elaf Bank provides a wide range of financial services involving fund-raising advisory, asset management, mergers and acquisitions, treasury, liquidity management, foreign exchange, investment, structured products and derivatives.

The initial stage of the partnership will focus on the BFX’s Murabaha liquidity management platform, e-Tayseer, a statement from the bank said.

Dr Jamil El Jaroudi, CEO, Elaf Bank, said: “Joining BFX’s Bait Al Bursa division brings a wide range of opportunities to Elaf Bank’s stakeholders. Of our immediate aims is to streamline all our Murabaha transactions through the Exchange’s liquidity engine e-Tayseer. In parallel, we will be working closely with the BFX Bait Al Bursa division in shaping up the next stage of Islamic products that the exchange is planning to launch and to work jointly on developing the secondary market for better liquidity management in Islamic banks.”

Arshad Khan, managing director and CEO of the BFX and the BFX Clearing and Depository Corporation (BCDC), said: “This partnership demonstrates the diversity of the BFX’s products portfolio that provides opportunities to the widest range of financial institutions both conventional and Islamic, which having different objectives and targeting different markets can benefit from the BFX’s multi-asset offerings.”

E-Tayseer, the first product of Bait Al Bursa, has been built with the regional Mena market in mind ensuring that its underlying assets are identifiable, and the process flow is fully Shariah-compliant to meet the current requirements of the market and fill the necessary gaps, the statement said.  

It offers financial institutions the option to purchase assets directly from asset suppliers based in the GCC region to be used for their Murabaha liquidity management transactions in a secure online environment, it said. 

With advanced automated features, e-Tayseer makes scheduling and execution of Murabaha transactions more streamlined and afford its users the benefit of reduced trade cycles and manual paperwork procedures. – TradeArabia News Service