HSBC scraps Sharia-compliant mortgages

I’d say epic fail, but despite global demands for this privilege, only 21,000 took it up.

HSBC scraps Sharia-compliant mortgages

5 October 2012 8:27 am | By Tom Selby

HSBC Interior Alternate 450

HSBC has stopped offering Sharia-compliant mortgage products following a strategic review of the bank’s businesses, according to The Times.

According to the paper, HSBC is scrapping Islamic loans and bank accounts for personal customers in Britain and several other countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Bangladesh.

A spokesman says: “Sharia mortgages are a very small business line for us in the UK. This is part of a strategic review of all our businesses.”

HSBC began offering Sharia-compliant home loans in 2003. The products account for 21,000 of HSBC’s 16 million bank accounts in the UK and £350m of mortgages out of HSBC’s book of £70bn.

from: http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/mortgages/hsbc-scraps-sharia-compliant-mortgages/1059074.article

8 Replies to “HSBC scraps Sharia-compliant mortgages”

  1. sharia mortgages were/are total bollox. They claim they charge no interest ( sounds good) but, in reality, all they do is re-name interest and call it rent or charges or some other name. It’s pathetic.

  2. It’s not just that the economics of sharia finance are flawed. It’s that there’s a lot of in-fighting among sharia “scholars,” and when the bank leadership decides on the structural basis of a particular Islamic financial product, they invariably piss off some sharia scholars who claim the product is un-Islamic. There are also a lot of risks in working with these sharia advisors who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Plus the sharia board personnel overlap across banks, so the whole sharia financial sector is incestuous with little checks and balance or transparency.

  3. In the UK, I think the fact that most of these loud bearded clams that were demanding sharia mortgages, actually live in state paid for council housing, banks need to check up on those demanding and if they ever had any intention of using it.
    Of course sane humans will just look for the best financial product, it was a looser from the start.

  4. It is lucky that HSBC stop sharia banking before it spreads to all banks in UK.Sharia banking is incompatible with us nonbelievers because it incorporates their totalitarian islamic faith into banking. In Malaysia, I noted with horror that the Islamic word/sign was added to 99% of the the banks in Malaysia.

  5. Didn’t the HSBC realize that most mobats exist on taxpayer welfare and don’t get mortgages? Failure serves them right.

  6. The virulent spread of islamic banking in country such as Malaysia, is just another one of their endless islamic and pro-islamic ploy to islamise everything and leave us nonbelievers with no choice. It is scary to note the way those islamic and pro-islamic are infiltrating almost every banks in malaysia with their arrogant islamic banking sign. Why can’t they leave the banks alone?