Nigeria's Open Space AI fintech appoints AlHuda CIBE MD Zubair Mughal as Shariah adviser

AlHuda CIBE MD Appointed Shariah Adviser to Nigeria's AI-Driven Fintech Open Space

AlHuda Centre of Islamic Banking and Economics (AlHuda CIBE) has appointed its Managing Director, Mr. Muhammad Zubair Mughal, as Shariah Adviser to Open Space Financial Services Limited, effective January 1, 2026. The move signals deeper Shariah oversight across Open Space's AI-enabled Non-Interest Financial products and core operations.

What this means

Mr. Mughal will guide Shariah governance structures, compliance frameworks, and product validation. His mandate includes aligning offerings with internationally recognized Islamic finance principles, regulatory expectations, and investor governance standards.

For product and finance teams, expect tighter linkage between product decisions, model design, and Shariah requirements. This will shape roadmaps, data governance, and release workflows.

Near-term changes product and finance leaders should anticipate

• Clear Shariah governance model: defined roles, escalation paths, and documentation standards across product, risk, compliance, and engineering.
• Gatekeeping in the lifecycle: Shariah reviews at ideation, pre-launch, and post-launch, with documented approvals and versioned artifacts.
• Stronger product validation: quantitative and qualitative checks to evidence compliance, plus independent review where needed.
• Transparent investor reporting: periodic disclosures on compliance posture, review outcomes, and remediation actions.

Product design implications for Non-Interest offerings

• Savings and investments: eliminate interest-based returns; structure returns via asset-based or partnership mechanisms recognized in Islamic finance.
• Credit: avoid interest; consider trade- or lease-based models that link profit to assets and risk-sharing, not time value of money.
• Insurance: Takaful-style risk pooling and surplus-sharing rather than conventional risk transfer.
• Inventory finance: use genuine purchase-sale or agency-based models with real asset flows and clear ownership transfer.

AI and model governance requirements

• Policy-as-code: encode Shariah rules as machine-readable constraints in decision engines and underwriting workflows.
• Dataset governance: exclude prohibited sectors; maintain provable data lineage and screening logs.
• Explainability: generate human-readable rationales that reference the applicable rule or ruling; store them for audits.
• Auditability: immutable logs for model versions, approvals, overrides, and customer outcomes.
• Human-in-the-loop: mandatory review for edge cases and any rule overrides, with timestamps and sign-offs.
• Continuous monitoring: alerting for model drift, rule violations, and exception spikes; defined playbooks for remediation.

KPIs that matter

• Time-to-approval for Shariah review per product/release.
• Exception rate due to Shariah screening (by product and segment).
• Model drift or rule-breach alerts per 1,000 decisions.
• Customer disclosure accuracy/acknowledgment rate.
• Audit findings closed within SLA.

90-day execution plan

• Days 0-30: Map each product to applicable Shariah requirements; define RACI across product, compliance, data, and engineering. Stand up version-controlled repositories for policies, rulings, and approvals.
• Days 31-60: Implement pre-launch Shariah gates in the SDLC; integrate sector screens and prohibited-use checks into data pipelines; build explainability templates and logging.
• Days 61-90: Pilot one Non-Interest product end-to-end under the new controls; finalize monitoring dashboards and investor reporting; train frontline, ops, and risk teams.

Why this appointment is credible

AlHuda CIBE has advised financial institutions, regulators, and market participants on Shariah-compliant product development and regulatory alignment across multiple jurisdictions. With 20+ years in Islamic banking and finance, Mr. Mughal brings practical oversight for Non-Interest product design and operations.

Open Space operates an AI-driven platform offering Non-Interest Financial products alongside conventional services including savings, investments, credit, insurance, and inventory finance. This appointment strengthens its ethical finance architecture with clearer standards, more transparency, and broader access to finance through technology.

Useful references

• AAOIFI standards for Shariah-compliant financial practices.
• Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) guidance on prudential and risk frameworks.
• AI tools for finance to support explainability, monitoring, and workflow automation.