ISLAMIC UNIT TRUST AND ETF

ZAINORA HAYARI ZP 01456
SUZANA ITHNAIN ZP 01432
ISLAMIC UNIT TRUSTS
&
ISLAMIC EXCHANGE-TRADED FUND
(ETF)

Purificati
on
Types of
Funds
Islamic Unit
Trusts
An OverviewIssue
Investment
Strategies of
Funds
ISLAMIC
FUNDS:
ISLAMIC UNIT
TRUSTS
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AN OVERVIEW
Islamic Unit Trust Funds, more commonly referred to as
Shariah funds are a group of specialized collective
investment funds which offer investors the opportunity to
invest in a diversified portfolio of securities that are
managed and selected by professional portfolio
managers in accordance to Shariah principles.
Beginning mid 1990s, the fund management sector has
become an attractive industry where investment
opportunities have increased choices available for
investors.
The term “Islamic Investment Fund” means a joint pool
wherein the investors contribute their money for the
purpose of investment to earn halal profits in strict

What is a difference between an Islamic and Non-
Islamic Unit Trust Fund?
A Shariah Fund offers similar benefits to any
other fund with the same investment objective;
the only difference is that it only invests in
companies that are in compliance with the
Shariah principles as outlined by the Shariah
Advisory Council (SAC) of the Malaysian
Securities Commission.
Like all the other non-Islamic Funds in Malaysia,
Shariah Funds are regulated by the Securities
Commission and placed under the same stringent
regulatory criteria.

2 TYPES OF INVESTMENT FUND
Open-Ended Funds Close-Ended Funds
Is a collective investment which can
issue and redeem units at any time.
Ie: Unit trusts
Is a company (investment company)
structure where the company will issue
shares for subscriptions.
Ie: the mutual funds in the US, In
Malaysia is ICapital.Biz.
An investor can purchase units in such
fund directly from the unit trusts
company, or through authorised agents
(individual and bank)
Is another type of collective investment
but with a limited number of units.
Refers to a fund operated by the fund
manager that makes offers to the public
and invests the proceeds in a group of
assets, in accordance with the fund’s
objectives.
It refers to a fund with a fixed number of
units outstanding, and one which does
not redeem units as open-ended funds.
It behaves more like stock.
Price: Computed on a daily basis by :
(Fund’s Total Aset – Liabilities)/No.of
Units Outstanding.
Price: Share determined entirely by
market demand. Often higher or lower
than the NAV per share.

TYPES OF FUND
There are 3 Varieties of Unit Trusts.
1. Equity Funds(deals in stocks)
2. Fixed income funds (deals in bonds)
3. Money market funds.

All units trusts are variations of these 3 asset
classes.
TYPES OBJECTIVES STRUCTURE/UNDERLIER
Money Market Funds To invest in money market. Short term debt instrument,
mostly treasury bills
Income Funds To provide current income
on a steady basis.
Government and corporate
debt, stocks and bonds.
Balance Funds To provide a balance
mixture of safety, income
and capital appreciation.
Mixture of fixed incomes and
equity.
Index Funds To replicate the
performance of a broad
market index.
Market Index.
Investment-Linked
Funds
To provide balanced
income for specific life
insurance or family takaful
plans.
Stock and bonds.

ISLAMIC UNIT TRUSTS
INTRODUCTION
1992 – 1ST Islamic Unit Trusts, namely Tabung
Ittikal Arab-Malaysian was launched.
This unit trust is managed by Arab-Malaysian Unit
Trust Bhd.
Then, there has been encouraging growth in the
Islamic unit trust industry.

Establishing Islamic Unit Trusts
Requires an Islamic fund Manager (must be holder of the
CMSL).
An Islamic fund Manager must carry on Islamic fund
management business only and must be stated in its
Memorandum and Articles of Association.
Major requirements for establishing Islamic fund
management is that the fund manager must appoint an
independent Shariah adviser (individual/a
corporation/Islamic Bank).

The Shariah Adviser :-
either a resident/non-resident (approved & registered by the
regulator
roles and duties quite similar to Shariah Board/Shariah
Advisory Committee of an Islamic Bank.
Must provide and advise Shariah expertise and guidance on
all aspects and matters of the Islamic fund management
business.
Must certify that the business has been managed and
administered according to Shariah principles.

VALUATION & PRICING OF UNITS
A fund manager should take all reasonable steps and
exercise due diligence to ensure that the fund and the
fund’s units are correctly valued and price.
To determine the fund’s NAV per unit, a fair and
accurate valuation of all assets and liabilities of the
fund should be conducted.
Valuations should be based on a process which is
consistently applied and leads to objective and
independently verifiable valuations.

Investment Strategies of Funds
Investment Strategies of Funds
• Applicable techniques
1- Fundamental
Analysis
2- Technical Analysis
3- Asset Allocation
4- Absolute Return
5- Arbitrage
6- Style Investing
Active Management
• The fund does not seek to
our perform any investment
benchmark, but rather aims
to replicate or track the
return performance of an
investment benchmark.
• Eg; CIMB-Principal’s KLCI-
Linked fund endeavours to
provide its unit holders a
return similar to the
performance of the KLCI.
• Less frequent and less
recurrent fund management
Passive Management

Purification of Earnings of Fund
The fund must have a Shariah Board.
The Shariah Board shall ensure that the returns
of the fund are purified from non-Shariah
compliant gains before the distribution of profits to
investors.
Purification = the cleansing of an investment
portfolio of impure elements.
Purifications may be done by deducting from the
returns on the investment those earnings
emanating from the unacceptable source.

t
1. Speculation
- Has mistakenly been equated with gambling
- Involves a great deal of computation which in the
highly developed computation techniques of today can
hardly be a game of chance
- The issue:
i.Accounts period
ii.Buying securities in margin
iii.Taxation
iv.Commission
v.Service charge
ISSUES in ISLAMIC UNIT TRUSTS

1.1 Account periods
-The length of this period can give the speculator a
great chance to operate:
“ he can buy shares even if he does not have any
cash: hope that towards the end of the period the
price of the share will go up so he can sell the shares
which he previously bought at the beginning of the
period and make a profit after paying the commission
and other costs”
- In order to curb speculation, it is tempting to suggest
that the Settlement day be the day of transaction.

Solution:
-In Shariah rules- “selling what he does not own” is
not permissible
-The transaction can be regarded as comparable to
the Salam (credit sale contract) transaction.

2. The diversity provided by an islamic Unit
Trust is perhaps its most attractive
feature, which on the flip side can also
provide room for uncertainty.
- Is the fact that an investor buys into a basket of
underlying
equities.
- In some cases, there are stocks which do not
comply with the
binding Islamic requirements

Solution:
-Have three options;
1. In i-VCAP’s case, the index is based on 25 stock
components: therefore, if one is not approved by
the SCM, we can rebalance the remaining 24
stocks so that it will proportionately take on the
percentage on the non-approved stock
1. To look for an approved stock with similar
characteristics and correlation as the one which is
not approved, and include that into the portfolio as
a replacement stock.
1. Maintain that portion of the non-approved counter
in cash.

3. Global Investments
Ability to gather information to analyse global companies or
issues to determine whether it is Shariah-compliant.
Justification:
- In classifying these securities as approved securities, the
SAC has applied a standard criterion in focusing on the core
activities of the companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia.
- companies with activities involving both permissible and
non-permissible elements must have good public perception
or image and that the core activities of the company are
important and considered maslahah (‘benefit’ in general) to
the Muslim ummah (nation) and the country, and the non-
permissible element is very small and involves matters such
as ‘umumbalwa (common plight and difficult to avoid) ‘uruf
(custom) and the rights of the non-Muslim community which
are accepted by Islam.

4. Selling Unit Trust products Outside
Malaysia
Legal and Regulatory issues
Acceptance by Middle-East investors of Malaysian unit
trust products.
i. Differing Shariah opinions and rulings
ii. Differing accounting standards

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Islamic
Exchan
ge
Traded
Fund
(I-ETF)
Understandi
ng the
nature of
ETF
Advantages &
Disadvantage
s of ETF
What is an
ETF?
The
Operation
of Islamic
ETF
ETF
Structure
ISLAMIC
EXCHANGE-
TRADED FUND
(ETS)

What is an ETF?
A listed index-tracking fund, structured as a unit
trust scheme whose primary objective is to
achieve the same return as a particular market
index by investing all (full replication) or
substantially all (strategic sampling) of its assets
in the constituent securities of the index.
In a simple meaning, ETF are actually unit trusts
that are listed on stock exchanges, which means
that the investors could trade them like stocks.

Understanding the Nature of ETF with
Respect to Stocks and Unit Trusts
ETF on the other hand resembles the feature of a
unit trust.
Eg; An investor purchases 1 unit of the unit trust.
It is as good as holding the various stocks on the
Exchange/Bursa.
Likewise when an investor purchases 1 unit, it is
as if the investor is holding several top stocks.
In addition, unit trust involves active management
where the fund managers pick the stocks that will
generate a higher return than the market return.

In Malaysia,
ETFs can be
differentiated
from shares
and unit trust
fund as in the
diagram box.

Disadvantages of ETF
1.
ETF are
bound to the
ups and
downs of the
market.

ETF STRUCTURE
The ETF structure as operated in the Malaysian market is illustrated
below :

Islamic Exchange Traded Funds (I-
ETF)
An Islamic ETF and conventional ETF share
common characteristics. The main difference
between a conventional ETF and Islamic ETF is
the benchmark index that the Islamic ETF tracks.
An Islamic ETF only tracks an Islamic benchmark
index where the index constituents comprise of
companies which are Shariah-compliant.
An Islamic ETF is also required to appoint a
Shariah adviser/committee to provide expertise
and guidance to ensure its structure, investment
and all matters related to the funds’ activities are
comply with Shariah.

The Operation of Islamic ETF
Diagram 1 : Basic Structure of an Islamic
ETF

Diagram 2 : Concept and Regulation of
Islamic ETF in Malaysia

What are the risks?
Among the risks that investors should carefully consider before
investing in ETF are:
1) Market risk- ETF prices are exposed to the economic,
political, currency, legal and other risks related to the index
that the ETF tracks.
2) Tracking error- Although the main objective of an ETF is to
track the performance of its benchmark index, the ETF’s
performance may deviate from the performance of the
benchmark index.
3) Lack of manager’s discretion- In this passive management
strategy, the manager does not try to outperform the
benchmark index.
4) Liquidity risk- The listing of an ETF does not guarantee that
there will be an active trading market for it. There is no

1. Purification or earning
Shariah scholars have different views about whether the
“purification” is necesary where the profits are made through
dividens, capital gains, assets or liabilities.
Justification:
- As per the current Shariah guidelines, purification is carried
out on any interest income earned and paid to the
shareholder through dividends only.
- The existing mechanism only purifies the dividend income
portion of the shareholder and that too on a partial basis.
- A dividend purification rate is calculated for each company
and applied to the dividend income earned from that
company.
Issue in Islamic Exchange Traded
Fund

2. Liquidity
Large majority of Islamic funds is not listed in any stock
Exchange
While it's important to look at how ETF shares are
trading, the fund's underlying holdings are really the
heart of the liquidity issue
One problem is that market makers—those who help
maintain orderly trading in ETFs—get rebates from
exchanges that are calculated on a per-share basis.
Thus, they may not have much incentive to maintain
relatively narrow gaps between bid and ask prices in
funds with very low trading volume.
Liquidity may be lower based on liquidity of compliant
Fund

3. Technical Issues
ETF requires intense technical infrastructure and
regulations for exchange, custodian or settlement
bank, manager and market maker
Regulations and technical systems are usually
established for conventional ETFs
Infrastructure may be incompatible with Islamic ETFs
for some instances and may require adjustments
Fund

4. Compliance Limitations
Short-selling of Islamic ETF may conflict with Islamic
principles
Asset-lending may be limited according to some
schools
Futures & options are also controversial, so it is hard
to establish Islamic commodity ETFs (ETCs) based on
futures contracts
Fund

5. Asset Allocation Issues
Since asset classes are limited, equity and bond
ETFs will be major types
Compliant bonds are best for allocation purposes if
their market is liquid
Gold and FX are compliant as long as they are traded
in spot market
Conventional hedging strategies using futures &
options on ETF may not be available
Fund

Solution
Tawarruq
- is the mode through which Islamic Banks are
facilitating the supply of cash to their clients. The
method consists on buying an asset and immediately
selling it to a client, either directly or indirectly, on a
deferred payment basis.
- The client then sells the same asset to a third party
for immediate delivery and payment, the end result
being that the client receives a cash amount and has
a deferred payment obligation for the marked-up price
to the Islamic Bank.

ISLAMIC UNIT TRUST AND ETF

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