NHMFC to Introduce Islamic Housing Finance

The National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC) plans to extend housing finance to the Filipino Muslim Community as it aims to introduce a new program for Islamic Housing Finance.

Being the country’s Secondary Mortgage Institution (SMI), NHMFC is continuously developing and introducing new products to cater to the underserved market, who have no access to financing under traditional housing finance programs offered by other institutions. 

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data of 2000, around 5.06 percent of the total Filipino population are Muslims. As of 2015, NHMFC estimates that there are about 5.8 million Muslims living in the country with the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) having the largest population of 3.4 million followed by Region 12 with 1.2 million. This is a great opportunity for the Philippines to tap the Muslim market, as the World Bank reported in 2015 that the Global Islamic finance market is worth $3 trillion. 

The program will further benefit the Muslim community who are having difficulty in accessing housing finance under the conventional method, because traditional financing does not offer Shariah compliant housing loans.