We are very pleased to welcome you all to our first Responsible Finance Summit which will follow from our Thirteenth International Takaful Summit. The Afkar Group pioneered the International Takaful Summits in London in 2007. The continuing evolution of Takaful provision in many countries has provided the backdrop for our Summits over the last twelve years. This year we are pioneering our fist Responsible Finance Summit and aim to make it the premier forum for positioning Islamic Finance as an inspiration for Responsible and Sustainable Finance.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have highlighted the critical role of financial inclusion in sustainable development. We will look at microfinance and SME finance in creating financial inclusion. Fortunately more global actors are getting interested in micro insurance and micro-takaful provision to create resilience for microfinance and make financial inclusion achievements more robust.
As awareness and public demand grows for Responsible investment, most of the leading asset management groups are beginning to incorporate these considerations into their investment priorities. In addition there are some faiths and responsible finance investment houses who are leading the way in showing what can be achieved if sufficient intellectual capital is invested in these products. It is heartening to know that there does not seem to be any performance penalty in restricting the investible universe to robust companies engaging responsibly with their stakeholders and the environment. We hope to have an extensive coverage of this newly emerging asset class.
Impact Investing has emerged as one of the more active parts of the responsible finance movement. Innovative products and ideas are emerging in this space. We look at some of the new methods and products which are designed to capture this space. It is also possible that these innovations embedding outcomes based returns for investors may enable more risk sharing modalities in the overall finance sector as a whole.
Clearly, regulators, capital market intermediaries, Shariah scholars and institutional investors will all need to incorporate these new parameters into their existing mandates. We aim to look at some of the changes that will be needed to enable and facilitate this news emerging asset class.
In the Responsible Finance Summit we endeavour to enable market participants from all over the world to capture the potential for Islamic Finance in enabling the growth of Responsible Finance in the world. We aim to strive to offer robust thought leadership and the most informed platforms and opportunities for our participants to get maximum benefit from this interaction.
We welcome you to our First Responsible Finance Summit and hope that you will become one of our many regular participants and supporters.
M Iqbal Asaria, CBE
Convenor
Responsible Finance Summit 2019