Saturna’s Patrick Drum Featured as Guest Speaker on Bloomberg Webinar "Global Islamic Finance: Principles, Trends, and Bloomberg Solution"
Bellingham, WA, September 25, 2024 – Patrick Drum, MBA, CFA®, CFP®, portfolio manager and senior investment analyst at Saturna Capital, was featured as a guest speaker on a recent Bloomberg webinar. The webinar, “Global Islamic Finance: Principles, Trends and Bloomberg Solution,” covered a range of topics relevant to those interested in better understanding the fundamentals of Islamic finance.
While other speakers discussed the details of sukuk and the Bloomberg tools available to monitor Islamic investments, Patrick Drum gave an overview of the market landscape for Islamic finance as well as recent and emerging trends. One of the key takeaways from his section was the relative underrepresentation of Islamic-compliant financial assets given the size of the global Muslim population. Putting this into perspective, Patrick Drum explained that JP Morgan reported their total assets of $3.7 trillion, serving 80 million customers. This is in comparison to $4.5 trillion in investments adhering to Islamic principles, though this number serves the world’s more than 2 billion Muslims.
Patrick Drum noted the Islamic financial market is growing, however, and provided several reasons for its appeal — even for non-Muslim investors. This provided another key takeaway from Patrick Drum’s presentation, as he discussed the favorable returns and relatively low risk Islamic investments offered. “When I started this journey of running sukuk portfolios, [understanding this] was a really eye-opening moment for me,” he said. He also proffered the saying “plenty in the bank, plenty in the tank” to describe the immense capital and hydrocarbon reserves found in Gulf Cooperation Council countries such as a Saudi Arabia and Qatar that helps make the region attractive for investors.
Patrick Drum’s portion of the webinar ended with a brief question and answer session with several audience members engaging.