Islamic-compliant investment manager Crescent Group has appointed Islamic finance expert, Sayd Farook, as head of strategy to lead the firm’s ‘$5 billion in five-years’ growth plan.
The appointment coincided with the group’s launch of the five-year strategic plan to grow its assets under management (AUM) to $5 billion by the end of 2026.
The group said it was planning to achieve this through the launch and issuance of Islamic-compliant mortgages by subsidiary Crescent Finance from the second half of next year and through strong growth of Crescent Wealth, Australia’s only Islamic-compliant superannuation fund.
Prior to this, Farook acted as a strategy and innovation adviser to the executive office of the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and was involved with Crescent Wealth as a collaborator for a decade.
Most recently, he was executive director of the Crescent Foundation, a not-for-profit chaired by former NSW Premier Bob Carr with a mission to raise funds to support refugees, and the homeless.
Prior to this Farook was global head of Islamic Capital Markets for Thomson Reuters (now Refinitiv) where he built the company’s global Islamic finance and capital markets business over a five-year period.
“Dr Farook’s role will be to effectively, and appropriately serve the needs of Crescent Wealth’s 11,000 customers while supporting the growth and execution of the Crescent Finance proposition, harnessing data and analytics throughout the growth journey,” Crescent Group founder, Talal Yassine, said.
“Combining his experiences incubating and leading large strategic growth initiatives and in global Islamic finance with our leadership position in the Australian market, we believe we can really improve access to financial services for Australia’s Muslims, which have almost reached 1 million.”
