Islamic Finance as a Means to Contribute To Ethical and Sustainable Economic Development

At the TedxLugano 2016 event held at the Franklin University Switzerland, independent financial consultant Noor Odeh delivered a Ted talk highlighting the use of Islamic finance as a means to contribute to ethical and sustainable economic development.

Extracts of Ted Talk

• It is time to start building an economy that is more connected to the real world, where finance and society are directly linked, where finance serves society and not the other way around. A financial system that tackles our world’s biggest problems, like poverty and climate change.
• The UNPRI and EUROSIF initiatives are fundamentally in line with the values behind something called Islamic finance. We are not talking about religion here. We are not talking about any name of finance. We are moving beyond labels and looking at principles. Islamic finance globally is increasingly recognised as an ethical form of finance, and as a matter of fact it’s helping the traditional ethical finance to grow to the next level.
• For Islamic finance, it is “profit” rather than “interest” that is closer to its sense of ethics and fairness. The concept of profit involves the idea of sharing the risks of profits and losses, and symbolizes entrepreneurship and wealth creation.

About Noor Odeh

Noor was born in Hamm, Germany and raised in Amman, Jordan. As a Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) from NACVA, she holds a BA and MA in Economics from Concordia University in Montreal, specializing in Financial Economics and completing her thesis on pricing mortgage backed securities. In 2007, she joined the finance team at a semi-government research company called Interuniversity Research and Analysis On Organisations (CIRANO) in Montreal. Her area of research was analysing the financial crisis.

In 2013, to further enhance her passion of promoting ethical finance, she completed her Islamic finance courses with CIMA and obtained a diploma in Islamic Finance. In the same year, she joined IDA Ireland and was appointed as the head of Islamic finance, where she assisted in developing the government’s Islamic Finance strategy, and began developing her own vision of establishing an ethical finance institution. Noor is happily married to Dr. Taleb Barghouthi. They currently reside in Dublin.