Our team
Our values
Our message should be easily understood, and for this reason, the team at Pfida follow these values:
People
We are here for the people. We’ve been saying it for a while; interest-based products that create and promote debt cannot be the only options out there. The finance options we have available to us currently are not in the people’s interest. We’re here to give people something different, something fair. We’re here to benefit everyone. Pfida for the people.
Purpose
Our people give us purpose. The people, the community, are at the heart of what we offer and what we do. To support the ordinary person, to invite and encourage diversity and inclusion within the community and to give everyone the chance of growing financially through an equitable, fair and ethical world. For the people.
Innovation
Our purpose pushes us to innovate. We leverage ideas and technology to deliver quality products and services. We want to learn from wherever wisdom comes to find solutions that maybe unique and different but are right for our people.
Transparent
We can only innovate by remaining transparent. We believe it’s key to always remain transparent with each other. Through open dialogue and honest feedback, we remain accessible to all, enabling us to grow as a team, a partner and a trusted business.
Excellence
We show commitment in heart and mind with a drive to excel in delivering our goals, and more. The impact of our strive for excellence should be felt positively by all people, individually and within the community.
Meet the team
Raza Ullah is CEO and Founder of Pfida. A qualified actuary by profession, with over 17 years of actuarial experience, Raza has previously worked within consultancy at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he advised multinational blue-chip organisations on technical reserving processes and capital validation. He has worked in-house within the Lloyd’s of London marketplace as a technical capital modelling actuary utilising stochastic Monte-Carlo simulation methodologies to quantify risk based on thousands of calibrated possible outcomes.
He has further gained regulatory experience at the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulatory Authority where he was a risk specialist overseeing best practices across the industry for risk measurement and quantification.
Raza progressed rapidly through to senior roles within the London financial marketplace, having passed every actuarial exam first time and within 3 years (a very rare accomplishment). Consequently, he saw how different businesses work from the lenses of consultant, in-house specialist, and regulator, and across many different levels all the way up to high performing board rooms.
Raza gave up his full-time actuarial career in 2016 to pursue setting up and running Pfida and bring a revolutionary solution to a real-world problem.
Salman, known to many as Badrul, is a Director at Pfida. He is a Shariah scholar as well as a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales, specialising in Islamic banking and finance.
Salman was formerly an Associate in the award-winning banking and finance team at the international law firm, Simmons & Simmons, based in Dubai. He is a Certified Shariah Advisor and Auditor with the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) in Bahrain.
Salman has over 10 years of experience in English law and Islamic finance. He read law with LLB (Hons) at the London School of Economics after which he studied BA Shariah (Hons) at Al-Azhar University.
Azhar qualified as a chartered accountant with then global accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Following executive roles in internal audit and operational risk management at stockbroking firms Charles Schwab Europe and Barclays Stockbrokers, he was part of the founding management team of Islamic Bank of Britain, the UK’s first standalone retail Islamic bank.
His further roles have included CFO of Al Rayan Bank and CFO & Executive Director of Qatar Islamic Bank (UK).
Through these roles, he has significant experience of building finance strategy and operations in start-ups and developing businesses. Azhar is also an experienced charity trustee serving on the boards of a number of UK charities.
Richard is an experienced leader of strategy and change with over 30+ years experiences in financial services and fintech. He has devised and implemented sales and distribution strategies and processes in both B2B and B2C environments, created and managed the outputs of focussed data analysis and instigated research and customer experience programmes. He has also managed, measured, motivated and mentored high performing sales teams through active targeting, support and incentivisation, as well as implemented market leading oversight and governance processes and reporting to keep companies safe.