StanChart-Backed Vault22 Eyes #UAE Move, Islamic Finance Platform - Bloomberg

StanChart-Backed Vault22 Eyes UAE Move, Islamic Finance Platform - Bloomberg

Vault22, a fintech company backed by Standard Chartered Plc’s innovation unit, plans to enter the Islamic finance market with Shariah-compliant personal-finance and wealth-management offering in the United Arab Emirates.

The company will roll out Hafiq, a new platform billed as a faith-driven approach to personal finance, in the Gulf state around mid-year. It will offer a Shariah asset-screening tool powered by artificial intelligence to help users make investment decisions, a real-time calculator for charitable donations known as zakat and a range of exchange-traded funds and thematic portfolios designed to appeal to millennial and Gen Z investors.

The announcement comes as the US-Israeli war on Iran, now in its 24th day, nears a possible inflection point. The UAE reported that the Islamic Republic launched overnight drone and missile attacks into Monday, hours before President Donald Trump’s deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz expires.

Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures and Next176, the venture-building arm of top African insurer by assets Old Mutual Group Ltd., created Vault22 about two years ago to tap into fast-growing markets for Islamic finance and AI-led wealth solutions in emerging and frontier markets.

The global Islamic finance industry was valued at $6 trillion in 2024, with the UAE ranking as the fourth largest country by assets, according to a study by the London Stock Exchange Group and Islamic Corp. for the Development of Private Sector.

“People need to be able to manage their risk, their finances and make long-term decisions around their wealth and savings ever more in times of uncertainty,” Stephen Ong, Vault22’s co-founder, said when asked about the impact of the Iran war on its expansion plans. “People need good wealth-management solutions and people need, we believe, these types of Islamic-first tools to help them fulfill their faith obligations.”

The company was created through the merger of 22seven, a popular South African budget aggregation and tracking platform and Autumn, a Singapore-incubated financial goals and wealth-planning app. It has set up a head office in the Dubai International Financial Centre to support plans to launch Hafiq in key Islamic finance markets in the Gulf and as well as Malaysia and Indonesia, and expand its Vault22 platform in Africa.

“The UAE offers a rapidly developing and enabling ecosystem for ventures like ours,” said Benito Mable, Vault22’s chief executive and co-founder. “Regulatory maturity and clarity is important and it’s there, and there’s also a huge linkage between the Middle East and Africa finance corridor that we sit in.”

The company, which also counts Franklin Templeton among its backers, is in talks with potential investors, including Gulf-based family offices, to support its expansion plans, the co-founders said, declining to identify them.

In Africa, the company is due to provide white-label infrastructure to two banks, allowing them to provide digital-wealth products to their clients without having to build their own systems, and is in talks over similar arrangements with others, Mable said, declining to identify them.

Vault22 is planning cryptocurrency and stablecoin offerings for its platform in South Africa, where the majority of its more than 1 million users are based. It’s also looking to service independent financial advisers in the country.