Jeddah: The Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit (ICIEC), a member of the Islamic Development Bank Group, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe Limited (SMBCE), a subsidiary of the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) of Japan, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for cooperation.
The MOU is intended to strengthen the existing partnership between the SMBC Group and ICIEC and to enable SMBCE and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Malaysia Berhad (SMBCMY), the Shariah-compliant arm of SMBC, to better meet the needs of their clients using various insurance programmes provided by ICIEC in the area of project and export finance on global basis. This is particularly pertinent for the SMBC Group in relation to its increasing number of infrastructure projects in ICIEC’s member countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The MOU was signed on behalf of ICIEC by Salem Sonbol, the Acting Chief Executive Officer of ICIEC, whereas Masahiko Oshima, the Chief Executive Officer of SMBC Europe signed on behalf of SMBCE.
WithAa3 rating by Moody’s, ICIEC provides investment and export credit insurance to facilitate cross border investments and to encourage trade transactions in its 42 member countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. ICIEC provides credit and country risk mitigation instruments in line with the Shariah.
The SMBC Group currently provides Islamic finance service through SMBCE and SMBCMY, both wholly owned subsidiaries of SMBC. The latter obtained the approval for providing the Islamic finance service by the Malaysian authorities in March 2014.