Latest news with #Offa
Zawya
19-03-2025
- Business
- Zawya
UK's Financial Conduct Authority authorises GII portfolio company Offa for Home Purchase Plans
Dubai, UAE – Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has authorised Offa, a portfolio company of Gulf Islamic Investments (GII), to provide home purchase plans (HPPs), the Sharia-compliant alternative to conventional residential mortgages, for customers across the UK. The authorisation will soon allow Offa, the UK's leading Islamic property finance fintech, which has been expanding rapidly via acquisitions, staff hires and product launches, to become the third active provider of HPPs in the market. Offa believes that this is the first licence by the FCA for a home purchase plan to a newly-authorised entity in more than seven years. It is another major accomplishment for Offa, the first Sharia-compliant bridging finance provider and the team that previously introduced the first Sharia-compliant buy-to-let (BTL) product to the UK. Commenting on the announcement, GII's co-Founders and co-CEOs, Mohammed Alhassan and Pankaj Gupta, said: 'We are delighted that the FCA has authorised one of our portfolio companies, Offa, to provide home purchase plans to British customers. This is another important step in their aggressive growth plans and we are expecting further exciting announcements in the near future.' Sultan Choudhury OBE, Executive Chairman at Offa, said: 'This is a significant and hard-won milestone for us at Offa. The real winners of course will be our customers, who will now gain greater access to our fast and easy Islamic home finance services thanks to our modern, tech-driven and paperless systems. 'By combining our teams' decades of industry experience with the latest technology, we are bringing Islamic finance into the 21st century, leaving behind the onerous paperwork and cumbersome systems that many customers have typically had to suffer in the past Gaining this important authorisation is another step toward achieving that.' Since charging interest is forbidden in Islamic finance, a Home Purchase Plan involves the Islamic finance principles of co-ownership-with-leasing where customers acquire the property in partnership with Offa and make monthly payments to increase their share, over time owning it. Offa recently acquired Bank of Ireland's Alburaq Sharia-compliant home finance portfolio in a landmark deal utilising a unique funding structure, including more than 350 home purchase plans. The company provides an ethical finance model designed in accordance with Islamic finance principles, which means not charging interest and investment into sectors deemed harmful to society – such as alcohol, tobacco, animal testing, and the arms trade.
BBC News
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Will promoting Welsh film locations encourage more visitors?
Ask people why they come to Wales, and mountains and beaches in general might feature highly in their two campaigns focusing on Welsh film and TV could give fans of the big screen more reasons to cross Offa's you want to walk on the exact beach where a dragon landed, Visit Wales and Visit Britain's international promotion of high-profile UK filming locations could be just the thing to draw in visitors to see the House of the Dragon filming site, one of many used in the HBO Game of Thrones prequel across north Wales. And while you're there, you could nip along to Plas Newydd country house on Anglesey, setting for new release Madfabulous which is coming out this tells the story of the flamboyant Henry Paget, fifth Marquess of Anglesey, starring Treorchy's Callum Scott Howells of It's a Sin Victorian eccentric equally scandalised and delighted society with his penchant for dressing up in outrageous costumes, putting on plays for local people and bankrupting his estate before his untimely death aged 29. Visit Wales is using the GB-wide promo video as a launching point to highlight other Welsh sites from series such as Sex Education, shot at the former University of South Wales campus in Caerleon, in Newport county, St Fagan's Museum of Welsh Life on the outskirts of Cardiff, and Gavin and Stacey in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan. Meanwhile Film Hub Wales has compiled a database of films with a Welsh link being released this year, with the aim of promoting the films both to distributors and the audience and highlighting different areas of Wales in the Made in Wales online guide signposts all film releases in 2025 with a star, location, or production team from manager Toki Allison says: "We're all about amplifying Welsh-connected films. So once a film has reached that point where it's going out for distribution or heading into festivals we like to pick it up and make sure that it's getting into cinemas. "There's a couple of heavy hitters coming out this year. Mr Burton which is coming from Severn Screen and is obviously the story of Richard Burton, and about his childhood life, school life and the mentor that he had."He took on the name of Philip Burton, so we're really excited to see that one coming out. That's got Welsh director Marc Evans attached to it as well and Aneurin Barnard's in it and Aimee-Ffion Edwards."Then we've got Madfabulous which is a really exciting film about Henry Cyril Paget. He was the fifth Marquess of Anglesey and was a really flamboyant character."Then there's Havoc, Welsh director Gareth Evans's next feature which sees Tom Hardy and Forest Whittaker in a big criminal action adventure so I guess that will be really fun for people." The filming for Havoc saw areas in Cardiff, Swansea and Barry stand in for the US, with Swansea's Guildhall transformed into a US police stars were both spotted enjoying time off in such places as Tenby, Pembrokeshire and Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, with Whittaker posting his enjoyment of the country on social a slightly sideways take on film fame, Visit Wales has also highlighted the pivotal role played by an aqueduct in the animated Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, the latest in the classic Aardman stop motion series featuring a hapless inventor and his long-suffering dog, which aired on Christmas Day in the filmmakers have acknowledged they were heavily influenced by the Unesco world heritage aqueduct at Pontcysyllte in Denbighshire when designing their own version for the climactic scene in the film. Back down in south Wales, later this year the town of Port Talbot will take centre stage on the big screen as the backdrop to Mr story tells the tale of Philip Burton, the teacher who took a young lad named Richard Jenkins under his wing during World War Two after seeing beyond the "wayward schoolboy" to the natural talent for acting he famously took on Mr Burton's surname and went on to become one of the world's most famous leading men in the post-war further west, rural Carmarthenshire will stand in for Long Island, New York, in the upcoming thriller The Man in the Basement starring Willem Dafoe, which is also set for release this year. The house above the titular basement looks every inch an all-American clapboard residence, but was actually built by a returnee from Pennsylvania towards the end of the 19th Welsh film should not just be associated with physical places visitors can see in the country, Film Hub Wales aim of the Made in Wales project is also to raise awareness of films set or filmed outside the country made by Welsh filmmakers or involving Welsh is highlighting films such as Satu: Year of the Rabbits by Powys-raised Joshua Trigg, which is entirely shot and set in Laos and tells the story of a young boy abandoned at birth who goes in search of his mother, and the relationship he forges with a young aspiring journalist who accompanies him along the way. Another is Brides, made by Welsh production company ie ie Productions, which follows two teen girls who leave the country covertly, heading for Syria and the prospect of very different lives to the ones they are leaving Allison says: "We're just really keen for people to recognise what Welsh film is, beyond the stereotypes and people's impressions of what that is."There's some really beautiful international storytelling. There's very different narratives coming out of Wales."We're a very diverse country and we want that to be reflected in what people understand Welsh connected film to be."
