Story: Mohammed A. Abu
Islamic Money Australia Pty Ltd’s Chief Executive Officer, Dean Gillespie,promoters of the country’s first-ever fully fledged Islamic bank has assured potential customers in the country and potential investors worldwide that everything is still on course.
“We always knew when starting this business for the community that we needed to raise $60 million overall – $20 million to build systems, and then $40m to launch.
“We successfully raised the first $20m, but have found it challenging to raise the $40m required to launch the business in the current worldwide economic environment.
“We’ve now built most of all of the technology and systems we need for launch. We have a BSB and a SWIFT code already, and we were almost on the verge of testing with real customers” Mr.Gellispie disclosed.
Confronting the Challenges
Raising capital in the current world environment,he disclosed, has been extremely challenging for many businesses. Unfortunately, Mr.Gillespie,intimated,raising the capital that we needed has occurred slower than we had hoped. “As a result, we took the decision to proactively return our banking licence to APRA so that we could continue to invest in building our systems and IT platform”,he added.
“We acted in absolute good faith, and as a result, we can and will apply again once we have raised the required capital again” he said,adding,”Once the required capital is raised in 2026, we will immediately apply for a banking licence and move towards launch – with the aim of opening the bank in 2027″.
Assurance
“We have not given up” Mr.Gellispie assured” adding,”Offering riba-free products is too important”.
SOURCE
Islamic Money Australia Pty Ltd website