Amanah
Shariah-compliant equipment finance for American businesses. A feasibility study, not a brochure.
Read the numbers before the story.
Every figure in this deck is one of four things, and each one says which it is.
Sourced — a published figure with a numbered link to the source. Primary — the statute or the data series itself, quoted. Decision — a number we choose, like a salary or a fee; it is not a claim about the world. Measure — something that cannot honestly be known until the first contracts run, shown as a range and marked as a thing to measure rather than assume.
There is no fifth category. Nothing here is an industry average standing in for a fact.
The study in five numbers
The rest of this document is how each of those five was arrived at, and what would have to be true for them to be wrong.
What is actually being sold
A sale, not a loan. The difference is the whole business.
What a murabaha is, mechanically
Six steps. If any one is skipped or reordered, it stops being a compliant sale and becomes an interest-bearing loan with extra paperwork.
- 1The customer identifies the equipment and the vendorThey choose it. We do not sell equipment and we do not advise on it.
- 2Amanah appoints the customer as purchasing agent, or buys directlyAn agency (wakala) instrument, written, dated, before any money moves.
- 3Amanah buys the equipment and takes titleThis is the step that makes it a sale. Ownership and its risk sit with Amanah, however briefly.
- 4Amanah sells it on to the customer at cost plus a disclosed markupThe markup is stated in dollars, fixed at signing, and never changes for any reason afterwards.
- 5The customer pays in instalments; Amanah takes a purchase-money security interestFiled within 20 days of the customer receiving the equipment, which is what gives it priority 8.
- 6On the last payment the security interest is releasedNo balloon, no residual, no renewal trap.
Why business equipment, and why this ticket size
Why equipment
It is a real, identifiable, movable asset — which is what makes a compliant sale possible at all. You cannot run a murabaha on working capital.
It has a serial number, an invoice and a resale market. When something goes wrong there is a thing to take back, and a price for it.
The purchase is already happening. Nobody has to be persuaded to want a commercial dishwasher; they have to be offered a way to pay for it.
Why $25,000 to $250,000
Below roughly $20,000 the cost of recovering the asset can exceed what it is worth — the deal loses money precisely when it goes wrong.
Above $250,000 the counterparties are large enough to have banking relationships and pricing we cannot match at this stage.
The band in between is where the paperwork is worth doing and the asset is still worth taking back. Both boundaries are judgements, and both should be revisited after twenty contracts.
What this deliberately does not do — yet
Scope discipline is the difference between a finance company and an accident. Each of these is a later phase with its own approval.
- No consumer finance, of any kindThe moment an individual borrows for personal or household use, an entirely different statute applies 1 and a licence is required. Business purpose only, evidenced in writing 4.
- No real estateHome and commercial property financing is a different product, a different regulator, and a market with entrenched incumbents 2021.
- No working capital, no cash advancesThere is no asset, so there is no compliant sale. This is the single most common way an Islamic finance product quietly stops being one.
- No depositsTaking deposits requires a bank charter. Capital comes from equity raised under an exemption 25.
- No leasing (ijara) in phase oneIjara is a better product for some assets, and a heavier one — it puts residual-value risk and maintenance obligations on the financier. It earns its own study.
The market, described honestly
Including the part where somebody already does this.
Who already offers Shariah-compliant business equipment finance
This is the slide most first-time decks leave out. It is also the first thing anyone who knows the market will ask about.
- Devon Bank — Chicago. Does exactly this.Its own published product list includes "Murabaha financing for business equipment and trade goods" and a "Murabaha Guidance Line" that aggregates smaller transactions 20. It states it has offered Islamic financing since 2003 23. It is a chartered bank, so its cost of funds is structurally lower than ours will be.
- UIF Corporation — a subsidiary of University Bank, Ann Arbor, Michigan.The one Islamic finance institution headquartered in this state. Its published products are home purchase and refinance, commercial real estate, construction, renovation, vehicle finance and deposit accounts. Business equipment is not on that list 21.
- The market just consolidated.UIF absorbed American Finance House LARIBA, the oldest US Islamic finance house, effective 1 April 2026 22. One fewer independent operator; the remaining ones are bank-affiliated.
- So the honest claim is narrow, and it is still a claim.Not "nobody does this". Rather: no Michigan-based institution offers Shariah-compliant business equipment finance, and the one out-of-state bank that does is a bank — it prices, underwrites and moves like one.
What that leaves as the actual opening
Three things a bank cannot easily do
Be in the room. A Michigan operator buying a $90,000 generator wants an answer this week, from somebody who will pick up the phone. Bank credit committees do not work that way.
Underwrite the relationship as well as the file. A community lender knows things about a borrower that a credit score does not carry, and can price that knowledge.
Move at the vendor's speed. Equipment deals die on timing. The financier who can turn a purchase order into a funded sale in days wins deals a cheaper financier loses.
And three things we cannot do
Beat a bank on price. A deposit-funded institution has a cheaper cost of funds and always will. Competing on rate is losing slowly.
Match their balance sheet. Capacity is capped by the capital actually raised — the model treats that as a hard constraint, not an ambition.
Claim to be first. We would be later, smaller and closer. That is a real position; it is not a unique one, and the deck does not pretend otherwise.
The demand side, from industry data rather than assertion
These are figures for the whole equipment finance market, not for a Shariah-compliant slice of it, and they are presented as such.
What no source can tell us: how many Michigan business owners would choose a compliant structure over a conventional loan, and what they would pay for it. Nobody publishes that. It is the first thing the first twenty contracts will measure, and it is marked as a measurement throughout this model rather than estimated here.
The demand nobody has to go and find.
There is an ownership group in Michigan operating roughly eighteen to twenty senior-living communities and a home-health and hospice business, with a track record in acquisitions and ground-up development.
That group buys equipment continuously and as a matter of course: commercial laundry, kitchen lines, walk-in refrigeration, standby generators, HVAC plant, nurse-call systems, beds, vans, diagnostic equipment.
Every one of those purchases is a murabaha that does not require a single cold call. Which turns the hardest question a new finance company faces — where does the first book come from — into a scheduling exercise.
What this deck does not do is put a number on it. Estimating someone else's capital expenditure and presenting it back to them as a market is how a plan loses credibility in one question. The number exists; it is in their purchase ledger, not in my model.
The mechanics that decide whether it works
Tax, title and priority. This is where structures like this usually fail quietly.
A murabaha involves two sales. Taxed carelessly, that costs 6% twice.
Michigan levies sales tax at 6% of gross proceeds on sales at retail 5, and it explicitly reaches "a conditional sale, installment lease sale, or other transfer of property, if title is retained as security for the purchase but is intended to be transferred later" 7 — which describes our structure almost word for word.
So the structure must answer two questions: is the first purchase taxed, and is the markup taxed?
Both have answers in the statute itself. Neither answer is an opinion, and both are on the next slide.
The tax architecture, from the statute
This is the single most under-modelled cost in US Islamic finance. It is also the most checkable.
- The purchase from the vendor: bought for resale, so exemptAmanah registers for sales tax and buys with Michigan's exemption certificate, Form 3372, claiming resale 28. The same mechanism every equipment dealer in the state already uses. Tax is not paid twice because the first leg is not a retail sale.
- The markup: outside the taxable base, if it is stated separatelyThe definition of "sales price" excludes "interest, financing, or carrying charges from credit extended on the sale of personal property or services, if the amount is separately stated on the invoice, bill of sale, or similar document given to the purchaser" 6.
- Which makes invoice design a tax control, not a formatting choiceBundle the markup into one deferred price and 6% lands on the profit. Itemise it — equipment price on one line, markup on another — and it does not. On a $100,000 contract with a $17,000 markup that is about $1,020 of tax per deal, created or avoided by how the document is laid out.
- And the customer pays tax once, on the equipment, as they would anywayThe structure is tax-neutral to the buyer versus a conventional loan. That neutrality is the point: a compliant product that costs 6% more than the conventional one does not get bought.
- This needs a tax opinion in writing before the first contractThe statute is clear on its face. Whether Treasury reads our specific document flow the way we read it is a question for Michigan tax counsel, and it is on the list of things this study does not price.
Title, priority, and what happens when it goes wrong
Getting in front of the bank
Most established businesses already have a blanket lien from their bank across all assets. A new financier who files late sits behind it and recovers nothing.
A purchase-money security interest in equipment outranks that existing lien — but only if it is perfected when the debtor receives the equipment or within 20 days after 8.
So the filing calendar is a credit control. Miss the window and a fully documented deal becomes an unsecured one.
Cost to file: $15. Cost to search first: $6 19. The cheapest risk control in the business.
The default sequence, written down in advance
Day 1–30 missed instalment; contact, cause established, documented.
Day 31 formal default notice; cure period runs.
Day 45 cure expires; recovery authorised.
Day 46–75 asset recovered and remarketed through a third party, not by us.
Day 90 loss crystallised against the provision and written up.
Every date here is a DECISION — a policy we set — not an industry figure. The recovery percentages, by contrast, are a MEASURE: nobody knows what our assets fetch until some are sold.
The credit box, stated before the first deal rather than after the first loss
All five are DECISIONS. They are written here so that a later exception is visible as an exception.
- Two years of operating history, and financial statementsNo start-ups in the first book. A new finance company and a new business are two risks multiplied, not added.
- A personal guarantee from the principalsStandard in small-ticket commercial equipment finance, and the thing that most changes behaviour when a borrower is deciding who to pay first.
- The equipment must have a resale marketIf we cannot name two places it could be sold, we are lending against scrap. Custom and installed-in-place assets are declined or priced as unsecured.
- Debt service coverage measured, not assumedCash flow after existing obligations must cover the instalment with margin. The threshold is a decision; the calculation is arithmetic on their statements.
- No concentration above 15% of the book in one borrower or one asset classA first book funded entirely by one relationship is not a portfolio. This constraint binds hardest on the anchor customer, which is precisely when it matters.
The problem Shariah creates that conventional lenders do not have.
A conventional lender charges a late fee and keeps it. The fee both deters lateness and pays for the collection work.
Under a compliant structure the fee cannot be income. A charge may be levied to deter deliberate delay, but it is paid away to charity, net of documented out-of-pocket recovery costs. Nothing flows to earnings.
So delinquency costs us the work with no offsetting revenue — and a borrower under cash pressure can work this out. When they must choose who to pay late, the lender who cannot profit from their lateness is the rational choice.
The answer is not a bigger fee. It is a personal guarantee, a filed security interest, and recovery handled by a third party on a published timetable. The structure has to be impersonal precisely because the relationship is personal.
Shariah governance
What compliance actually requires, who signs it, and what that signature is worth.
What compliance requires in practice
AAOIFI publishes the standards these contracts are judged against, including its Shariah Standard on murabaha 27.
- Real ownership, for a real momentAmanah must own the asset before selling it. If money goes straight to the customer, or the sale is papered after the fact, the transaction is a loan and no certificate repairs it.
- Risk must actually sit with the ownerBetween purchase and resale the ownership risk is ours. It is brief, and it is not notional — which is why the agency documents and the timing of title are reviewed, not just the contract's title page.
- A fixed, disclosed markup that never movesStated in dollars at signing. It does not increase on late payment, it does not reprice, and it does not compound. Ever.
- No penalty incomeLate charges are permitted as a deterrent and paid to charity net of documented costs. This is audited.
- Early settlement handled explicitlyA customer who pays early may be given a rebate, but it cannot be an enforceable contractual right to a discount calculated like interest. The treatment is decided by the board in advance, not improvised.
- The operational risk is bigger than the contractual oneThe contracts get reviewed once. The execution — which account paid the vendor, on what date, against which purchase order — is where compliance is lost, every time. That is a systems problem, and systems are the part I actually build.
Getting credible scholars on board — the realistic sequence
Timeline is a DECISION about how we phase it. The one thing that cannot be compressed is the last step.
- 1Decide what is being certified, and write it downProduct architecture, contract set, document flow, default remedies, early settlement. A board cannot review an intention.
- 2Approach two or three scholars or advisory firms with that documentNot with a pitch deck. An advisor's first read tells you whether your structure is serious, and costs nothing but their time.
- 3Structuring review and revisionExpect the structure to change here. If it does not, the review was not real.
- 4Certification of the product, with conditions attachedThe conditions are the valuable part — they tell operations exactly what must be true on every single deal.
- 5Annual audit of executed transactions, on a sampleChecking that what happened matches what was approved. This is the step that makes the certificate mean something a year later.
- 6A standing board once volume justifies itNamed scholars with published credentials, disclosed on the website. Credibility in this market is a function of whose name is on it — and that cannot be bought quickly, at any price.
What certification buys, and what it does not
What it buys
Permission to be considered by customers and investors for whom compliance is not negotiable. Without it the product does not exist for them.
A structural audit by people who have seen this fail before — genuinely useful engineering review, not a rubber stamp.
Operating conditions that convert religious requirements into instructions a bookkeeper can follow.
What it does not buy
Legal enforceability. A Michigan court will decide a dispute on the UCC and the contract, not on a fatwa. The documents must stand on their own as commercial instruments.
Protection from our own operations. A certificate covers a structure. It says nothing about the deal where somebody skipped a step.
Cost certainty. This study does not print a price for Shariah advisory, because I have not obtained quotations. Three named firms, three written quotes, and then it becomes a line in the budget. Until then it stays empty on purpose.
The accounting has to satisfy two frameworks at once
US GAAP — what the tax return and any bank will see
The transaction is presented as a financing receivable. The markup is unearned income, recognised over the term by the effective-interest method.
This is the version that files, audits and borrows.
A conventional model would stop here — and would also quietly accrue penalty interest on delinquent balances, which we cannot do.
AAOIFI — what the board will review
The asset is recognised at cost when title passes, derecognised on resale, and the deferred profit is carried and released across the instalments 27.
The same cash flows, presented so that the sale is visible as a sale.
Both sets of books are produced from one ledger by design. Reconciling two systems after the fact is how discrepancies become findings.
Regulation
What has to be true before the first contract is written.
Licensing — why business-purpose credit sits outside the consumer statute
Quoted from the statutes, with links. This is a reading of the law, not legal advice — a written opinion from Michigan counsel is on the list of things not yet priced.
- The Michigan Regulatory Loan Act is a consumer statuteIt defines a regulated loan as "a loan made by a licensee to an individual for personal, family, or household use" 1. Business-purpose credit to a business entity is not that.
- Rate freedom for business credit, with a ceilingA non-bank and a business entity may "agree in writing to any rate of interest not exceeding the rate allowed" by the criminal-usury act 2 — and that ceiling is 25% simple interest per annum 3. The base case prices at 11.5%, less than half of it.
- The written record is what creates the exemptionA "business entity" includes a natural person who provides "a sworn statement in writing specifying the type of business and business purpose" for the funds 4. That sworn statement is therefore a compliance document, collected on every deal, no exceptions.
- And a murabaha is a sale, which changes the question againWe are a seller of equipment on deferred terms, not a lender of money. That helps on the lending statutes and is exactly what pulls sales tax into the picture. Both analyses have to hold at the same time.
- Commercial financing disclosure law is the live riskSeveral states now require APR-style disclosure on commercial credit and treat a markup as a finance charge. Whether Michigan has, or will, is a question for counsel — and the product should be built to disclose cleanly regardless, because it can afford to.
Federal obligations, as they stand today
- OFAC screening — no threshold, no exemptionSanctions compliance binds every US person and entity 26. Every customer and every vendor is screened before money moves. This is automated on day one because it is strict liability.
- Beneficial-ownership reporting: no longer required for US companiesFinCEN's final rule of 11 August 2026, effective 14 August 2026, permanently exempts US-formed companies and US persons from Corporate Transparency Act beneficial-ownership reporting 24. Any plan written before mid-2026 gets this wrong, and several will still tell you to file.
- Raising capital without registeringEquity from investors under Rule 506 of Regulation D 25, with its conditions on accreditation, solicitation and information. The documents are a securities lawyer's work product, not a template.
- Anti-money-laundering programmeA non-bank commercial equipment financier's formal obligations are narrower than a bank's. We adopt a written programme anyway — because the first bank that opens an account for us will ask for it, and because the cost of having one is trivial next to the cost of not.
What this study deliberately does not price
Five empty lines. Each says who to ask. An empty line with a name on it is worth more than a filled one with a guess in it.
- Shariah advisory and certificationObtain written quotations from three named advisory firms. No figure is stated anywhere in this deck.
- A Michigan tax opinion on the invoice structureMichigan tax counsel. The statute is quoted above; the opinion is what makes it safe to rely on.
- The contract set — master murabaha, agency, security agreementMichigan commercial counsel. Templates from another jurisdiction are how structures fail.
- Securities documents for the raiseSecurities counsel. Cost scales with the structure chosen, which is not yet chosen.
- Insurance — errors and omissions, and cover on assets in transitA broker, with three quotes. Not modelled, because I have not asked.
Unit economics
One contract, line by line, before anything is scaled.
A single $100,000 contract over 36 months
Base-case pricing. The arithmetic is in model/model.py and reproduces from the inputs shown; no line here is a plug.
| Line | Amount | What kind of number this is |
|---|---|---|
| Equipment cost, paid to the vendor | $100,000 | the customer's invoice |
| Profit rate to the customer | 11.50% per annum | MEASURE — what the market bears; ceiling is 25% 3 |
| Monthly instalment | $3,298 | DERIVED — amortisation of the above |
| Total collected over the term | $118,714 | DERIVED |
| Gross markup | $18,714 | DERIVED — the gross revenue of the deal |
| Documentation fee at signing | $750 | DECISION — must be actual cost recovery, not a second return |
| Sales tax on the markup, if invoiced carelessly | −$1,123 | avoidable entirely — separately state it 6 |
| UCC search and filing | −$21 | PRIMARY — $15 to file, $6 to search 19 |
| Expected credit loss at the base rate | −$4,200 | MEASURE — base assumes 1.4%/yr against an industry 0.72% 14 |
| Cost of capital, if the facility is drawn | −$10,500 | MEASURE — on average outstanding, at 7.0% |
| What is left, before any overhead | $4,743 | DERIVED — and this is the number that has to pay for the company |
Which is why the only question that matters is scale.
One contract contributes a few thousand dollars over three years. The company costs several hundred thousand a year to run. So the business does not work or fail on pricing — it works or fails on how much is outstanding at once.
That gives one number worth more than any projection in this deck: the contracts outstanding at which the book covers its own overhead. Overhead divided by profit rate minus losses. Arithmetic, not opinion.
Base case: $3,910,891 of contracts outstanding. Pessimistic, where pricing is weaker and losses higher: $6,076,923. Optimistic: $3,376,068.
Every operating decision in this plan is downstream of getting past that line as fast as the capital allows.
Where the money to lend comes from
Phase one: equity only
No deposits — that needs a charter. No warehouse facility — nobody funds a book with no performance history.
So year one deploys equity, and capacity is capped at what was raised. The model enforces this: it will not originate a deal it has no capital for, which is why the pessimistic case originates so little.
The comparison an investor will make is to what their money earns elsewhere. Investment-grade corporate credit yielded 5.86% in September 2026 11; overnight secured funding was 3.62% 10. A private, illiquid, first-time book has to clear both by a meaningful margin to be worth doing.
Phase two: a compliant funding facility
Once there is a seasoned book with real performance data, leverage becomes possible — and it is what turns a thin business into a viable one.
It must itself be Shariah-compliant, which narrows the providers and raises the price. The model carries a cost of funding as a MEASURE, not a quote: 7.0% in the base case, 6.5% optimistic, 7.5% pessimistic.
Nobody has been asked for that facility yet. Until someone has, the number is an assumption with a name on it, and the deck says so.
The five-year model
Three scenarios. The pessimistic one does not work, and it is in here anyway.
How this model is built, so you can attack it properly
- It is a cohort engine, not a growth curveContracts are originated month by month; each one amortises over its term while profit accrues on the declining balance. Nothing grows by a percentage — the portfolio is the sum of real contracts.
- Capital is a hard constraintIf the capital is not there, the deal does not happen. This is why the pessimistic case stalls: it is not pessimistic pricing alone, it is pessimistic capital.
- Every input carries its classDECISION, MEASURE, or SOURCED with a citation. Open
model/model.pyand every one is labelled in the source. - Losses, prepayment and utilisation are all modelled, not waved awayIncluding the cash that sits idle between deals, which is the cost first-time models always forget.
- It produces the failure case as readily as the success caseThe same code, different inputs. The pessimistic column is not decoration — it is what happens if pricing lands at 9.5%, losses run at 3%, and the raise comes in at $1.5m.
Base case
The case this plan is actually built on.
| Capital | Deals | Avg contracts outstanding | Profit income | All costs | Pre-tax | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $2,500,000 | 24 | $1,082,418 | $124,478 | $428,154 | −$285,676 |
| Year 2 | $4,000,000 | 48 | $3,546,885 | $407,892 | $566,563 | −$122,672 |
| Year 3 | $6,000,000 | 84 | $7,103,588 | $816,913 | $819,189 | $60,723 |
| Year 4 | $8,000,000 | 115 | $11,339,427 | $1,304,034 | $1,145,709 | $244,576 |
| Year 5 | $10,000,000 | 139 | $15,195,110 | $1,747,438 | $1,442,180 | $409,508 |
Pessimistic case
Weaker pricing, triple the industry loss rate, and a smaller raise. This one does not reach profitability in five years — that is the answer the model gives, and it is not adjusted.
| Capital | Deals | Avg contracts outstanding | Profit income | All costs | Pre-tax | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $1,500,000 | 12 | $343,905 | $32,671 | $416,117 | −$374,446 |
| Year 2 | $1,500,000 | 12 | $851,619 | $80,904 | $462,949 | −$373,045 |
| Year 3 | $2,000,000 | 17 | $1,151,460 | $109,389 | $510,572 | −$388,433 |
| Year 4 | $2,000,000 | 14 | $1,169,889 | $111,139 | $545,283 | −$423,643 |
| Year 5 | $2,500,000 | 21 | $1,459,519 | $138,654 | $600,079 | −$445,674 |
Optimistic case
Stronger pricing, losses near the industry rate, and capital available when the pipeline is.
| Capital | Deals | Avg contracts outstanding | Profit income | All costs | Pre-tax | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $4,000,000 | 36 | $2,038,471 | $254,809 | $434,708 | −$152,899 |
| Year 2 | $7,000,000 | 84 | $7,313,402 | $914,175 | $658,176 | $318,999 |
| Year 3 | $11,000,000 | 144 | $15,080,132 | $1,885,016 | $1,073,337 | $919,679 |
| Year 4 | $16,000,000 | 204 | $24,080,171 | $3,010,021 | $1,555,198 | $1,607,823 |
| Year 5 | $22,000,000 | 264 | $33,420,535 | $4,177,567 | $2,015,156 | $2,360,410 |
The three side by side, on the fifth year
Same engine, same code, three sets of inputs. What separates them is on the next slide.
| Pessimistic | Base | Optimistic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capital deployed by year five | $2,500,000 | $10,000,000 | $22,000,000 |
| Contracts written, five-year total | 76 | 410 | 732 |
| Outstanding at year five | $1,459,519 | $15,195,110 | $33,420,535 |
| Pre-tax result, year five | −$445,674 | $409,508 | $2,360,410 |
| Cumulative over five years | −$2,005,242 | $306,459 | $5,054,013 |
| Return on capital, year five | -17.8% | 4.1% | 10.7% |
| First profitable year | none in five | year 3 | year 2 |
| Outstanding needed to break even | $6,076,923 | $3,910,891 | $3,376,068 |
What actually moves the outcome
Year-five pre-tax, moving one variable at a time and holding everything else — because moving two and attributing the result to one is how plans mislead their own authors.
- Price to the customer$105,606 → $713,410
- Credit losses$105,606 → $500,679
- Cost of funding$193,655 → $553,410
- Capital actually deployed$160,563 → $503,236
- Operating cost$252,156 → $566,860
- Leverage$174,893 → $433,236
What breaks this business
Ranked by how much damage, not by how likely. Each one has a countermeasure or is declared unmanaged.
- Pricing lands below 10% — the single biggest leverIf compliant borrowers will not pay a premium for compliance, the margin disappears. Countermeasure: test price on the first ten contracts before the second raise, and be willing to stop.
- Losses run at three times the industry ratePlausible for a first book with no scorecard. Countermeasure: personal guarantees, PMSI filed inside 20 days, resale-market test on every asset, and hard concentration limits.
- The capital arrives more slowly than the pipelineIdle capital and idle staff at the same time is the fastest way to burn a seed round. Countermeasure: hire against contracts signed, not against forecast — the operating budget is deliberately small for this reason.
- Borrowers pay us last because we cannot punish them for itStructural to compliant finance, and nobody in the room will raise it. Countermeasure: impersonal third-party recovery on a published timetable, from the very first delinquency, including with people we know.
- A single operator dependencyOne person who understands the structure, the systems and the compliance is a single point of failure an investor should refuse. Countermeasure: written procedures and a second underwriter before the book passes $5m. Until then, unmanaged and disclosed.
- A tax or disclosure ruling lands against the structureCountermeasure: written opinions before the first contract, not after the tenth.
Operations
Who does the work, what it costs, and what runs it.
The year-one team, and why each seat exists
Every figure on this slide is a DECISION — a budget we set. None is a salary survey, and none pretends to be. Verify against live postings before making an offer.
| Seat | Budget | Why it cannot be skipped |
|---|---|---|
| Credit and structuring lead | $135,000 | Somebody has to own the decision to deploy capital. This cannot be outsourced — it is the fiduciary core of the business. |
| Operations and servicing | $75,000 | Vendor payments, title, UCC filings inside the 20-day window, invoicing, collections, OFAC screening. Also the named compliance officer. |
| Founder — systems, product, compliance liaison | $60,000 | Deliberately below market. The systems, the integrations and the two-framework ledger are built here rather than bought. |
| Employer taxes and benefits | $54,000 | Roughly 20% on the above. A decision about what we offer, not a market figure. |
| Total year-one payroll | $324,000 | Three people, one of them cheap on purpose. |
Everything else it costs to run, year one
Vendor lines are DECISIONS pending quotation. The three marked obtain a quotation stay empty until somebody has actually been asked — they are not guessed.
| Line | Year one | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll, fully loaded | $324,000 | DECISION — previous slide |
| Loan servicing and origination software | $18,000 | DECISION — budgeted; three vendors to be quoted |
| Legal — corporate, contracts, ongoing | $25,000 | DECISION — budgeted against a retainer, not a quote |
| Accounting, audit and tax | $12,000 | DECISION — budgeted |
| Insurance — E&O, asset in transit | obtain a quotation | ABSENT — a broker has not been asked |
| Shariah advisory and certification | obtain a quotation | ABSENT — three firms to be asked in writing |
| Securities counsel for the raise | obtain a quotation | ABSENT — scales with the structure, which is not chosen |
| Office, systems, screening, filings, travel | $16,000 | DECISION — budgeted |
| Modelled operating cost, year one | $395,000 | DERIVED — the sum of what is decided. The three absent lines are additional and real. |
What runs it — and why this part is not bought off a shelf
The operational risk in Islamic finance is not contractual, it is procedural. Systems are the control.
- One ledger, two presentationsGAAP for filing and banking, AAOIFI for the board — produced from the same transactions rather than reconciled afterwards 27.
- A document flow that cannot be executed out of orderAgency instrument, purchase order, vendor invoice, title, resale invoice with the markup separately stated 6, UCC filing inside the window 8. The system refuses the next step until the previous one exists.
- Screening and filing as gates, not remindersOFAC before any payment 26. The 20-day filing clock starts automatically on delivery confirmation and escalates on day 12.
- Every figure in every report traceable to a transactionThe same discipline this study is written under: a number with no source behind it does not render.
- Built, not licensed, for phase oneBecause the compliant document flow is the product, and no off-the-shelf loan system models a sale with a separately-stated markup and a charity account for penalties.
Eighteen months, in the order it has to happen
Nothing here needs the next thing to start. Each step is a gate — if it fails, the plan stops rather than proceeds on hope.
- 01Entity, counsel, and three written opinionsStructure, tax treatment of the invoice, and the securities route. Before anything else.
- 02Shariah advisory engaged and the contract set reviewedQuotations first. The product changes in this step, by design.
- 03Capital raised under an exemption 25The raise defines capacity, so it defines everything downstream.
- 04Systems built and tested against a dry-run contractDocument flow, screening, filing clock, dual ledger. No live deal until a fake one passes end to end.
- 05First ten contracts — the measurement phasePrice, cycle time, cost to close, exception rate. These replace the four MEASURE inputs in the model with facts.
- 06Re-underwrite the plan on those tenIncluding the option to stop. A plan that cannot be stopped at step six was never a plan.
- 07Scale origination; approach a compliant funding facilityOnly with a seasoned book and real performance data behind it.
- 08Second product — ijara — as its own studyNot an extension. A different risk with a different structure.
Name, mark and colour
Why each choice, and what was rejected.
If the name should also say what it does — ten A.M.A.N.A readings
Asked for, and answered honestly: the last two are the only ones worth using, and the recommendation at the bottom is not to use any of them.
| # | Reading | What it does for you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Asset Murabaha Advisory · North America | Says the product and the geography. Reads like a division of something larger. |
| 2 | Accountable Murabaha And Non-interest Assets | Leads with accountability. 'Non-interest' is a negative definition — it explains by what it is not. |
| 3 | American Murabaha And Non-interest Advisory | Puts American first, which matters to a US regulator and a US customer. |
| 4 | Asset-backed Murabaha Across North America | The only one that reads as a sentence without strain. Ambitious on geography. |
| 5 | Assured Murabaha And Non-interest Assets | 'Assured' is a promise word. In finance a promise word invites a question you cannot answer. |
| 6 | Advancing Muslim-American Non-interest Assets | Names the community directly. Narrows the customer to one, deliberately. |
| 7 | Asset Management And Non-interest Advancement | Sounds institutional and says almost nothing. Four hundred firms could use it. |
| 8 | Americans' Murabaha Alliance for Non-interest Assets | 'Alliance' implies members. We are a company, not a body. |
| 9 | Assets · Murabaha · Accountability · No riba · Audit | Not a sentence — five principles. Works as a charter line on an interior page, under the mark. |
| 10 | Agreement · Markup · Asset · No interest · Audited | The five letters are the five facts of every single contract we write. The strongest of the ten: it is not a slogan, it is a checklist the company can be held to. |
And the recommendation is to use none of them on the mark.
A backronym earns its place when the name means nothing on its own — SUKAR is a surname, so expanding it to Solutions for Unified Growth, Automation & Results adds meaning that was not there.
Amanah already means something, and it means exactly the right thing. A trust — something placed in your keeping that you answer for. Expanding it into an acronym replaces a word a customer already feels with a sentence they have to read.
So: keep Amanah as the name. If a charter line is wanted for an interior page or the governance section, use number ten — Agreement · Markup · Asset · No interest · Audited — because it is the only one that makes a promise the company can actually be audited against.
Never on the mark, never on the invoice, never under the wordmark. A logo that explains itself is a logo doing the wrong job.
The name
Amanah · أمانة
Amanah means a trust — something placed in your keeping that you are answerable for. In classical usage it is the opposite of a transaction: it is the obligation that survives one.
It says what a finance company should want to be known for, in one word, in both languages, to both audiences — and it needs no explanation to either.
It is short, it is pronounceable in English without instruction, and it does not read as a translation.
It is still a working name. Trademark screening and domain clearance come before any spend on signage or stationery.
What it is not
Not a compound word. No 'HalalFi', no 'EquiTrust', no portmanteau. Those read as a start-up, and a finance company asking for other people's money should not read as a start-up.
Not an English abstraction. Meridian, Summit, Keystone — the names of four hundred banks, and carrying no conviction about what makes this one different.
Not a word that has to be taught. If the first thing the brand does is explain itself, the brand is doing the wrong job.
Not a claim. Nothing in the name promises a return, a rate, or an outcome.
The mark
Four options were drawn, all set in open-licensed typefaces and converted to outlines so the logo renders identically anywhere with no font installed. Option A is the chosen mark.
Why the serif capitals, and not the other three
- A serif in capitals is the register of institutions that hold other people's moneyIt is what Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Guggenheim have in common typographically, and it is not an accident: the letterforms predate the company, which is exactly the impression a custodian wants to give.
- The wide letterspacing does the work an emblem would otherwise doEighteen percent tracking turns six letters into a considered object. It reads as deliberate at any size, and it needs no symbol beside it — which is why there is no icon, no crescent, no geometric device.
- The geometric sans (B) was rejected for saying technology, not custodyIt is the register of a payments app. Correct for a product, wrong for a balance sheet.
- The high-contrast serif (C) was rejected for fragility at small sizesIts thin strokes disappear on a business card and in an email signature — where a finance mark actually lives.
- The bilingual lockup (D) is kept, but as a secondaryأمانة set beneath the Latin is right for the community-facing surfaces and wrong for a vendor invoice or a UCC filing. A mark that cannot be used on a legal document is not the primary mark.
- Both typefaces are open-licensedEB Garamond and Noto Naskh Arabic, both under the SIL Open Font License. No licence to buy, no rights question at scale, and the outlines are embedded so nothing depends on a font being installed.
Colour
Three options, one recommendation. Colour on a financial mark has one job: to be unremarkable for twenty years. Anything that reads as a trend has already failed.
Recommendation: ink navy, with a single copper accent used only for emphasis and never for the mark itself. One colour for the wordmark, one accent, nothing else. The palette is a constraint, not a system.
What I need, and what I am not asking for
The end of the study is a list of questions, not a signature block.
The questions only you can answer
Each of these changes the model. None of them is rhetorical.
- Does the name stay Amanah?Everything downstream — trademark screening, domains, signage, the mark — waits on this one word.
- Which scholars, and will you introduce them?Credibility in this market attaches to names. Whose name can this carry, and who will make the introduction?
- What does the group actually buy, and when?Not an estimate of it — the purchase ledger. It converts the hardest question in the plan into a schedule.
- What capital is realistic, and on what timetable?The three scenarios differ mostly on this. It is the input that decides which column we are living in.
- What return do the partners expect, and over what horizon?Base case returns 4.1% on capital in year five. If the expectation is materially above that, the honest answer is that this structure does not meet it — and it is better to know now.
- Who else is in the room?A structure like this is reviewed by whoever the partners trust on credit. I would rather meet them early and be argued with than be approved politely.
What this study is asking for.
Not money. Not a signature, not a term sheet, not a commitment of any kind today.
Three things, each small: an hour with whoever the partners trust on credit, so the model gets attacked properly rather than admired. Sight of what the group actually buys, so the pipeline slide can be built out of facts instead of left blank. And one introduction to a scholar whose name this could carry.
If those three go well there is a version of this worth capitalising. If any of them goes badly, that is worth knowing for the price of a coffee — and the study still stands as the thing that found out.
The five empty lines in the budget stay empty until somebody has actually been asked for a quote. That is the part I would most like you to hold me to.
A range does not launder a guess, and a disclaimer does not license one.
The rule this document was written under. Every figure here is sourced, decided, or deliberately absent — and the absent ones are the point.
Sources
Every figure in this deck carries a number. Each number is a link to the source that stands behind it.
- 1Under the Michigan Regulatory Loan Act, a regulated 'loan' is one made to an individual for personal, family, or household use — the act is a consumer statute — MCL 493.1(2)(j)
Michigan Legislature “"Loan" or "regulatory loan" means a loan made by a licensee to an individual for personal, family, or household use.” - 2A non-bank may agree in writing with a business entity to any rate of return up to the criminal-usury ceiling — MCL 438.61(3)
Michigan Legislature “it is lawful in connection with an extension of credit to a business entity by any person other than a state or nationally chartered bank … for the parties to agree in writing to any rate of” - 3Michigan's criminal-usury ceiling is 25% simple interest per annum — 25%
Michigan Legislature — MCL 438.41 “at a rate exceeding 25% at simple interest per annum or the equivalent rate for a longer or shorter period” - 4A 'business entity' includes a natural person who gives the credit provider a sworn written statement of the business purpose of the funds — MCL 438.61(1)(a)
Michigan Legislature “a natural person who furnishes to the extender of the credit a sworn statement in writing specifying the type of business and business purpose for which the proceeds … will be used” - 5Michigan sales tax is 6% of gross proceeds — 6%
Michigan Legislature — MCL 205.52(1) “an annual tax for the privilege of engaging in that business equal to 6% of the gross proceeds of the business” - 6Financing or carrying charges on credit extended in a sale are EXCLUDED from the taxable sales price if separately stated on the invoice — MCL 205.51(1)(d)(viii)
Michigan Legislature “Interest, financing, or carrying charges from credit extended on the sale of personal property or services, if the amount is separately stated on the invoice, bill of sale, or similar docume” - 7Michigan sales tax applies to a conditional sale or installment lease sale where title is retained as security and intended to transfer later — MCL 205.52(2)(c)
Michigan Legislature “A conditional sale, installment lease sale, or other transfer of property, if title is retained as security for the purchase but is intended to be transferred later.” - 8A purchase-money security interest in equipment outranks an existing blanket lien if it is perfected within 20 days of the debtor receiving the goods — 20 days
Michigan Legislature — MCL 440.9324(1) (UCC Article 9) “if the purchase-money security interest is perfected when the debtor receives possession of the collateral or within 20 days thereafter” - 9US bank prime loan rate — 6.75% (9 Sep 2026)
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, via FRED (DPRIME) - 10Secured Overnight Financing Rate — 3.62% (10 Sep 2026)
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, via FRED (SOFR) - 11ICE BofA BBB US Corporate Index effective yield — the market price of investment-grade-floor corporate credit — 5.86% (10 Sep 2026)
ICE Data Indices, via FRED (BAMLC0A4CBBBEY) - 12Delinquency rate on business loans, all US commercial banks — 1.27% (Q2 2026)
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, via FRED (DRBLACBS) - 13Net charge-off rate on business loans, all US commercial banks — 0.58% (Q2 2026)
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, via FRED (CORBLACBS) - 14Equipment finance industry charge-off rate — small-ticket segment — 0.72% (June 2026); 0.54% industry-wide
Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, CapEx Finance Index
Sources (cont.)
Every figure in this deck carries a number. Each number is a link to the source that stands behind it.
- 15Equipment finance receivables over 30 days delinquent — 1.7% (June 2026)
Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, CapEx Finance Index - 16Equipment finance credit approval rate — small-ticket — 80.7% (June 2026); 79.5% industry-wide
Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, CapEx Finance Index - 17Monthly new business volume reported by ELFA member companies — $10.5bn seasonally adjusted (June 2026); year-to-date +11.3% on 2025
Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, CapEx Finance Index - 18Muslim American population — about 5.5 million of all ages, roughly 1.6% of the US population (2026)
Pew Research Center, '25 Years After 9/11, a Portrait of Muslim Americans', 3 September 2026 - 19Michigan UCC filing fee, and the fee to search the UCC records — $15.00 to file; $6.00 to search
Michigan Legislature — MCL 440.9525 “the fee for filing and indexing a record under this part is $15.00 … The fee is $6.00” - 20Devon Bank (Chicago) already offers Shariah-compliant business-equipment financing, including a facility that aggregates smaller transactions — "Murabaha financing for business equipment and trade goods"; "Murabaha Guidance Line for aggregating smaller transactions"
Devon Bank — Faith-Based Products - 21UIF Corporation, a subsidiary of University Bank (Ann Arbor, Michigan), offers home, commercial real estate, construction, renovation and vehicle financing plus deposit accounts — its published product list does not include business equipment — product list as published
UIF Corporation - 22UIF absorbed American Finance House LARIBA, consolidating the two onto one platform — effective 1 April 2026
UIF Corporation - 23Devon Bank states it has offered Islamic financing structured to avoid conventional interest since 2003 — since 2003
Devon Bank — Faith-Based Financing - 24FinCEN permanently ended beneficial-ownership reporting for US-formed companies and US persons under the Corporate Transparency Act — final rule issued 11 Aug 2026, effective 14 Aug 2026
FinCEN (US Treasury) - 25Private capital may be raised without SEC registration under Rule 506 of Regulation D, subject to its conditions — 17 CFR 230.506
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations - 26OFAC sanctions compliance obligations apply to all US persons and entities — 31 CFR Part 501 — Reporting, Procedures and Penalties Regulations
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations - 27AAOIFI publishes the Shariah standards that govern murabaha and the related contracts, including Shariah Standard No. 8 on Murabaha — AAOIFI Shariah Standards
Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions - 28Michigan's exemption certificate for a purchase made for resale is Form 3372 — Form 3372, Michigan Sales and Use Tax Certificate of Exemption
Michigan Department of Treasury