Episode 26-Central Asia's Fintech Revolution

Majlis & Markets

Despite a young, tech-savvy, and predominantly Muslim population, Islamic finance in Central Asia remains small and underdeveloped. The region's financial services and fintech sectors also lag behind their global counterparts.

In our 26th episode, we spoke to Abdullo Kurbanov, co-founder of Alif Bank, a leading challenger bank in Central Asia.
Today, Alif serves 1.3 million customers in Tajikistan and 1 million customers in Uzbekistan. It also employs 1022 people in Tajikistan and 264 in Uzbekistan. Adding to this, Alif recently launched in the UAE and plans to enter Pakistan.
Abdullo is also the co-founder Ayan Capital, a new Islamic car finance provider in the UK.
In this episode we covered several topics including:

• Insights on managing a fintech in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
• Challenges for Islamic finance in the region
• Establishing a new venture in the UK

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Intro theme song-'Tales of the Arabian Nights' composed by StudioKolomna via Pixabay

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1. Episode 26-Central Asia's Fintech Revolution (00:00:00)

2. Beginning of discussion (00:01:46)

3. Abdullo's background (00:02:16)

4. Setting up Alif (00:10:55)

5. Islamic finance in Tajikistan (00:15:24)

6. Reflecting on Alif's last decade (00:20:22)

7. Serving Tajik market (00:24:02)

8. Islamic banking replicating conventional? (00:32:32)

9. Expanding to Uzbekistan (00:44:34)

10. Looking beyond CIS markets (00:50:20)

11. Launching Ayan Capital in the UK (00:53:51)

12. How does Islamic car leasing work? (01:00:55)

13. Why haven't incumbents offered this? (01:02:42)

14. Social media accounts (01:04:40)