Certification proves a product was compliant on the day it was issued. Audit proves it still is. Independent Shariah audit against AAOIFI standards, for institutions in nine regions.
The problem
Products drift. A pricing table is updated, a partner is added, a market is entered, an engineer changes the order in which two events fire. Each change is small and reasonable on its own, and none of them is referred to the Shariah adviser, because nobody involved thought it was a Shariah question.
Shariah audit is how that drift is caught. It samples what the institution did against what it was certified to do, the transactions, the controls, the documentation, the income, the disclosures, and reports the gap while it is still small.
Contract named
Murabahah, ijarah, wakalah, or a hybrid
Ownership transfer timing
Whether it happens before the sale is booked
Fee sequencing
Charged for a service rendered, not for time given
Late payment treatment
Whether it enters revenue or goes to charity
What we do
Sampling live transactions against the certified structure to confirm the product behaves as approved.
Whether the institution's own controls would have caught a non-compliance before we did.
Agreements, disclosures and customer-facing terms against the approved structure.
Identifying non-compliant income, quantifying it, and confirming it was channelled correctly and never recognised as revenue.
For funds, including those domiciled offshore, against the constitutive documents and the applicable screening criteria.
The report your board, your regulator and your investors require, feeding straight back into the next cycle of supervision.
Why ADL
Our team pairs certified Muftis holding AAOIFI qualifications with people who understand code, systems and product architecture. We hold Malaysia Digital Status from the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation, a technology credential, held by a Shariah advisory firm. Where there is an app, we go into it. Where there is a core banking system, we review the configuration.
Registered Shariah Adviser with the Securities Commission Malaysia and with Labuan Financial Services Authority.
We work primarily against AAOIFI standards and reconcile with the applicable local regime. An opinion grounded in AAOIFI travels across borders.
Beyond applying Islamic finance standards, our team has been commissioned by a standard-setting body: research towards a governance standard, participation in the drafting of a preliminary standard, and a series of training assignments.
Auditing against another adviser's pronouncement is ordinary work for us, as is being audited by another firm. Independence is the point of the exercise.
We work in jurisdictions with mature Islamic finance regulation and in markets with none at all, where the structure has to satisfy Shariah while operating entirely within a conventional rulebook.
Best Shariah Advisory in Islamic Asset Management, presented in Jeddah in February 2026.
Members of our team hold Shariah board and committee seats across the institutions we serve, so our advisory work is informed by governance experience, not only by external review.
How we hold ourselves
Our measure of a good year is not only revenue. It is whether we helped one more business get to halal. That is why we will take a call from a founder at ideation stage, and why our pricing bends to what a client can actually carry. We would rather a small platform get its structure right at the start than be priced out and get it wrong at scale.
A business built on an Islamic label still has to be a good business. Sound fundamentals, capable people, honest disclosure, and a high standard of compliance with local regulation, because that is what protects the customer and the investor. Shariah compliance sits on top of that foundation. It is not a substitute for it, and we will say so if we see it being treated as one.
The Lifecycle
Compliance is a state you maintain rather than a certificate you obtain, and the audit cycle is how you maintain it.
We understand the certified structure and what has changed since before we quote.
Scope, timeline and fee agreed, agreement signed.
The deep stage: transaction sampling, control testing, documentation review and income purification, against the certified structure.
Findings returned as the Shariah report your board, regulator and investors require.
Issued by a certified Mufti.
Issued under a reference any counterparty can verify independently.
The cycle runs annually, at minimum, for as long as the institution operates: sampled against the certified structure every year, and every time it materially changes.
We commit to two to four weeks for a first pronouncement. In practice it often runs longer, and in our experience the reason is the round trip rather than the review. We raise amendments, and your product and engineering teams need time to work through them. We would rather set that expectation now than surprise you in week three.
Engagements are scoped and priced individually. We have worked with institutions we certified ourselves and with institutions certified by other advisers, offshore and onshore. One size does not fit all. Tell us what you are building and we will tell you what it takes.
Evidence
We audit Islamic banks and windows, investment funds including offshore-domiciled structures in the Middle East, the Caribbean and British Overseas Territories, takaful operators, crowdfunding, payment and digital asset platforms, venture capital funds and their portfolios, and corporates across HR, finance and provident funds.
Questions
No. A financial audit tests whether the numbers are right. A Shariah audit tests whether the transactions behind the numbers were permissible, and whether the institution's controls are capable of keeping them so.
Yes. Independence is the point of an audit, and auditing against another adviser's pronouncement is ordinary work.
Annually is the norm and is what most regimes expect. Ongoing supervision runs continuously between audits, the two are not alternatives.
Our certification confirms Shariah compliance. It is not an assessment of whether a business is viable, whether its financials are sound, or whether the people running it can execute. Look at both questions, and do your own due diligence on the second. Every ADL certificate carries a reference you can check independently.
Book a consultation, whether you certified with us or elsewhere. We will tell you at the first meeting what the scope looks like.