CITIGROUP will focus on a three-pronged approach to grow its Islamic banking business in Asia, said Citigroup Asia head of Islamic banking Rafe Haneef.  
“We are looking at further developing our consumer sector, corporate investment banking structure and wealth management business,” he told Starbiz. 
Although Citigroup already has a range of Islamic products – normal retail banking products such as home financing, current and saving accounts – it wants to further improve on the product range.  
“Our strategy is to divide the consumer market into different segments and target the segments with various products that will meet their financial needs.  

“We need the players to congregate here – bankers; accounting, taxation and law specialists as well as Syariah scholars. We also need to bring in the talents as well,” he said. He is “very bullish” about the Islamic wealth management business where he believes Citigroup can make the difference.  
He sees enormous liquidity in the Muslim world, which is looking for a variety of Islamic structured products, because of the high oil prices.  
“We offer clients innovative products which provide them with exposure to different asset classes – commodities, equities, Islamic fixed income and real estate, among others. We want to make Asia a centre for Islamic wealth management – to design products here and offer it globally,” he said.  
Haneef believes there is still space to grow especially in the wealth management business. 
“There are still not that many products in the market and that is where we want to grow. We hope to have a range of consumer and wealth management products in local and foreign currency by year-end,” he said, adding that Citigroup had poured in a substantial amount of investments to develop the Islamic banking business especially in ensuring that system enhancements were completed.  
Haneef said Citigroup's decision to have a dedicated Islamic banking team in Malaysia was to ensure a more sustained business growth in Asia.  
“It will be a more structured approach in Asia now. With the Kuala Lumpur office as the regional centre for Asia, we will be developing the business in Brunei, Indonesia and elsewhere in the region.  
“At the moment it is still small but we are hoping to increase the business over time. Now that we have a dedicated team, we can move more aggressively to grow the business,” he said.  
He sees a lot of opportunities for Citigroup to grow its market share in the domestic Islamic banking industry as total Islamic banking assets versus total banking assets only stood at 12% after 30 years.  
“At 12%, there is still so much room to grow. It would be more difficult for us if Malaysia's total Islamic banking assets had hit 30% or 40%. That is why more banks are moving into Islamic banking. All of them are looking for areas of growth and because this is a new emerging industry there is definitely more opportunities for growth,” he said.