In hopes of broadening their product offering to investors, Qatari-based asset manager QInvest announced the launch of its new Sharia compliant real estate fund called the QInvest Pramerica Liquid Real Estate Fund.

 

Working in partnership with Pramerica Real Estate Investors, a US-based real estate investment firm with assets under management of US$61.5 billion, the fund will focus on high yielding sharia compliant real estate investment trusts and other real estate-related securities.

 

“The launch of this fund further broadens the product offering available to our investors, with the addition of a new high quality asset class with attractive yields and for which there is active demand,” comments Tamim Hamad Al Kawari, CEO of QInvest.

 

As part of the partnership between Pramerica and QInvest, Marc Helle, head of global real estate at Pramerica, will actively manage the new fund for QInvest. “We are excited to offer Sharia-compliant investors access to our value-oriented investment approach, which is based on intensive top-down fundamental research and bottom-up security analysis by our global portfolio management team,” says Helle.

 

The fund will be part of QInvest’s QMAP (QInvest Managed Account Platform) that uses global partnerships to provide Sharia investors a whole slew of investment options.

 

“We are very pleased to offer investors access to a fund which aims to provide both an above average distributable income yield, relative to other funds of its type, as well as an opportunity for strong capital appreciation,” explains Ataf Ahmed, managing director and head of asset management at QInvest. “The launch means that investors could benefit from a better entry point in the near term, following the recent sell-off in global markets.”

 

QInvest already has six funds under its QMAP scheme the most prominent being its QInvest Pioneer European Fund, which actively seeks out Sharia compliant pan-European blue-chip, mid and large cap stocks.  

 

The recent Qinvest fund launch highlights the growing demand for Sharia compliant investment instruments. According to Islamic finance data provider Lipper, 2014 saw a significant increase of Islamic fund launches contributing $2.27 billion to the overall Islamic asset management community, which is currently estimated to be over $60 billion in size.