WEALTHTECH
Wealthandvalues Personalised wealth management app Cocoa Invest – with its halalbut-diverse investment portfolio, monitored by real advisors, headquartered and regulated in Bahrain with offices also in Denmark and Sweden, and a UK founder – is what you might call a truly universal hybrid.
It’s the brainchild of Omar Shaikh, who upped sticks for Copenhagen in pursuit of love, lifestyle and the best environment in which to build his own wealthtech, and has been quoted as saying that: “Danes are very hard to impress. If we can be successful here, hopefully other markets will be easier to conquer!”. Born in Britain, where he took his degree at Edinburgh University, Shaikh developed his financial acumen at Schroders PLC (as part of a specialist fund of hedge funds business, managing more than $6.6billion), and at Capita (where he was an authorised corporate director for some of the UK's largest hedge fund clients), before focussing on shariah investment strategy as an advisor to a Middle-Eastern family office. Although important to him on a personal level, it took a while for the penny to drop that Islamic financial solutions weren’t as readily available as they might be – particularly since the ethical framework on which they are built ticked so many boxes beyond the faith-based. “I believed that the small rustlings of Islamic finance I saw in London were amplified elsewhere, but stepping outside of London into Europe and the rest of the world, I found access to faith-compliant options scarce and people’s understanding of them nominal,” says Shaikh. “In fact, I became a dispenser of sharia-compliant investment advice to friends, family and strangers wherever I went. “Watching the financial industry walk past such a large market just for lack of providing the transparency needed by observant Muslims was upsetting. But not as upsetting as seeing investors wanting to invest yet being too afraid to because of the uncertainty surrounding conventional products’ ethicality.”
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TheFintechMagazine | Issue 18
As Cocoa Invest gears up for the launch of its ethical investment app, Founder Omar Shaikh reflects on faith, money and doing the right thing
So, determined to make a difference, Shaikh began building a solution in 2015, locating his company in Copenhagen, having moved there with his Danish girlfriend, now wife. A comparatively small, if talented, fintech hub when he arrived, Copenhagen has since become one of the Top 20 cities in Europe for fintech, according to the latest Findexable rankings. Over the next four years or so, his core mission to provide a truly modern application that removed barriers and uncertainty around halal investing, shaped every aspect of product development – from securing agreements with the most reputable fund managers to building a team of both active and passive investment management specialists and, finally, designing an app to be intuitive to millennials and baby boomers alike. The passion and drive generated by this process led to him wearing several hats. In 2017, he was appointed Trade and Investment Ambassador for Scotland with a focus on fintech, having by then served as board member to Copenhagen Fintech. Shaikh holds a strong affiliation to both the UK and Denmark – and both have had a significant influence on his current project, enabling him to tap into Europe’s best tech talent. It’s why Cocoa Invest was spotted by the Central Bank of Bahrain – part of one of the world’s most important Islamic finance hubs, which is building an open banking framework that suits the Cocoa Invest model. “Being singled out and invited to the sandbox of such a prestigious institution is a badge of honour for any
startup and, as Cocoa was to be an Islamic-compliant product, it made sense to create our first headquarters in the Kingdom of Bahrain,” says Shaikh of his decision to apply to be regulated there. “I remember feeling trepidation early on in the project, given that its geographical location was so far from our teams in Denmark and Sweden, but we were very impressed by the setup, the enthusiasm, and the balanced 50/50 gender split on many of the financial institutions’ boards present in Bahrain, which infused their support programme with incredible energy,” says Shaikh. “The team running the fintech programme at the Central Bank is incredibly talented, knowledgeable and forward-looking, and run almost exclusively by women, which is so refreshing.” So, why was Bahrain so taken with the Cocoa app? First and foremost, it will make it easy for anyone to start shariah-compliant investing. Users simply download it, define their profile, define their attitude to risk, and they are off. Whether or not they choose to brush up on the difference between exchangetraded and mutual funds, their money is safely spread across vetted investments and watched over by Cocoa’s experienced, certified portfolio managers who monitor stocks, Islamic bonds, real estate and commodities from all over the world. Take a closer look at its portfolio breakdown and you begin to understand why Shaikh’s startup caught the eye of Bahrain and users in Europe and the UK – thousands of whom are on the waiting list for the hoped-for December launch. While halal portfolios are very often weighted
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