Digital Islamic finance platform IslamicFinanceGuru (IFG) has raised GBP3 million (US$4.13 million) which it will use to bolster its personal finance offering to an audience beyond the UK.
Starting out as a Shariah personal finance blog in 2015, IFG has evolved to become an Islamic investment comparison website with a range of proprietary Islamic financial products including online Islamic wills.
Founded by former lawyers Ibrahim Khan and Mohsin Patel, the start-up has grown into a team of 10 with the platform attracting some 120,000 visitors monthly. IFG intends to use the latest investment round, led by Outward VC, with participation from B&Y Venture Partners and angel investors, to roll out new products and enhance its technology infrastructure with the aim of creating personalized experience for its user base.
‘The IFG mission is really simple: we want to help bring a quarter of the world’s population back to even keel. For too long Muslims have not had the same access to investing and finance as everyone else, and we are incredibly motivated to change that,’ said Khan.
It is also expanding its team across product, tech, business development and content and has already secured incoming senior talent from Metro Bank, OakNorth and late-stage German start-up, Taxfix.
“IFG’s initial focus is the UK’s Muslim community. Muslims are the UK’s poorest faith community and are often excluded by traditional financial products due to the requirements of their faith. For example, one-third of working Muslims do not have a pension, most commonly due to a lack of Shariah compliant funds available though the pension provider,” the start-up noted.
‘Like everyone, Muslims struggle to navigate complicated financial decisions. But they also have an additional pain point: is the thing they are looking at in line with their faith? That’s where we come in with jargon-free and expert analysis to guide them,’ said Patel.
The investment round was also participated by the co-founders of fintech unicorns Onfido and Acorns as well as senior executives from Facebook, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse.