Sultan Choudhury, CEO of Al Rayan Bank receives OBE from HRH Prince William

Sultan Choudhury, Chief Executive Officer of Al Rayan Bank has received his Order of the British Empire (OBE) from His Royal Highness, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge at a special investiture ceremony held at Buckingham Palace on Friday 10 November. Mr Choudhury was appointed OBE in the Birthday Honours of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, in recognition of his services to Islamic finance. He was accompanied to the investiture by his wife, three children and father.

A driving force behind Al Rayan Bank’s success and Islamic banking’s increasing popularity in the UK, Mr Choudhury was part of the management team that obtained Western Europe’s first authorised Islamic banking licence in 2004. He has since grown the Bank to become the UK’s largest Islamic bank* and one of the fastest growing banks in the country**. In addition, he has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of Islamic banking in the UK.

Al Rayan Bank’s experts have worked with the UK Government on initiatives that have helped to establish the country as a major global centre for Islamic finance, through the creation of a legal, regulatory and taxation environment in which Sharia compliant finance can compete on an equal footing with conventional.

Al Rayan Bank offers the largest Sharia compliant product range in the UK. It is founded on faith-based, ethical principles which are derived from trade, entrepreneurship and risk-sharing, in which the customer and bank work together as partners towards a mutually profitable end. The Bank currently has more than more than 80,000 customers throughout the UK, more than a quarter of which it estimates to be non-Muslim.

As an independent UK bank, Al Rayan Bank is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority and is a member of Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

* Based on latest ‘published accounts as of May 2017

** In 2016, the Bank was named as the third fastest growing bank in the UK by pre-tax by profits, in a complete financial analysis of all 155 UK incorporated banks. Source: Bank League Tables 2017, a complete financial analysis of all 155 UK incorporated banks, Searchline Publishing 2017