 Towards the end of this segment of the course, we would like to have a focus on securitization of credit card assets with a reference to, of course, Islamic credit cards. Islamic credit cards portfolios could be quite big. The banks offering Islamic credit cards may accumulate a lot of assets on their books. By assets, I mean that they might have a very large number of customers who would be using credit facility offered by the bank through Islamic credit card. So that portfolio, we call it an asset Islamic credit card assets portfolio of the bank. In some cases, this amount which the bank has offered in the form of credit facility, it could run into billions, billions of dollars or billions of rupees in the context of Pakistan. Now, banks like other organizations, they may face shortage of liquidity, i.e. they may find that there are a lot more customers for Islamic credit cards. However, the bank doesn't have enough money to meet that demand. There are different options to raise additional funds. One of them could be securitization. How securitization works. So many banks securitize their existing assets to raise more funds. Securitization involves creating securities of certain denominations and selling them on discount to third parties to raise additional funds. For example, an Islamic bank may have its credit cards portfolio worth 1 billion rupees. The 1 billion rupees key credit facility the bank has already provided to its customers. It may wish to issue 1 million securities with denominations of 1000 rupees and sell these to investors for 900 rupees each. In this case, the bank would be actually selling a portfolio which is worth 1 billion for a price which is less than 1 billion. For example, 1 billion rupees portfolio may comprise 800 million rupees worth of financing and 200 million rupees worth of return. So that makes 1 billion. The sale of securities if a security is priced 900 rupees that would generate an amount of 900 million rupees. In this way, the bank may face a reduction of 100 million in its return. Banks are very smart organizations. They don't do anything which doesn't benefit them. In this case, the bank has already got a portfolio of 1 billion in which 800 million is its own money and 200 million is the return which it is going to generate from these Islamic credit cards. Bank would sell this portfolio for 900 million. Then it would have an additional 900 million to use this for Islamic credit card portfolio or for something else. If that is the case and if the return on this new money 900 million remains the same, then the bank would be able to generate a return of 180 million rupees on this additional amount. The total return the bank would be getting would be more than 200 million and that is what is one benefit of securitization. The question arises and this was the main purpose of this module whether this is acceptable from a Sharia viewpoint. Of course not because in this case the bank is selling debt. The bank is selling cash and debt for a price which is less than the face value of the portfolio. The portfolio had a face value of 1 billion. However, it was sold for a price of 900 million which is exchange of an asset money in unequal quantities and if you remember we defined riba prohibited interest as an exchange in which an asset is exchanged in unequal quantities. Secondly the debt part which was 200 million actually the bank ended up getting only 100 million for that one. However, through this securitization process the bank got 280 million total return and that was the objective. Unfortunately in an Islamic economic context this kind of securitization is not allowed.