Alexforbes Investments Alexforbes Shariah Portfolio Range (High Growth and Medium Growth, Umbrella and Retail Retirement)
Islamic Retirement & Pension in Mpumalanga
The Shariah-compliant portfolio range from South Africa's largest retirement fund administrator and umbrella fund provider. Alexforbes Investments runs a dedicated Shariah compliance range, led by Shariah High Growth (with Shariah Medium Growth alongside), available to institutional investors in Alexforbes umbrella and standalone retirement funds and to individuals through Alexforbes Invest retail products (fund fact sheets are published in both institutional and retail versions, the retail one noting availability for retirement investment products). Per the January 2026 fact sheet, Shariah High Growth is a multi-asset portfolio targeting long-term growth (six years plus) with a benchmark allocation of 45% FTSE/JSE Shariah All Share equity, 30% MSCI World Islamic equity, 7% local Shariah property, 13% cash (STeFI Composite minus 1%) and 5% Dow Jones Sukuk, implemented via specialist manager sleeves (Shariah Equity Local 53.3%, Shariah Equity Global 22.0%, Shariah Sukuk Local 9.6%, Shariah Property Local 8.6%, Shariah Sukuk Global 6.4% at the fact sheet date). Top equity holdings at January 2026 were led by AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, MTN Group and Valterra Platinum, reflecting the resources tilt of the Shariah-screened JSE.
Alexforbes matters here because of where it sits: it administers the retirement savings of a huge slice of employed South Africa, so Shariah portfolios in its houseview range convert compliance from a personal project into a payroll checkbox. The construction is proper multi-asset with local and global sukuk sleeves and honest volatility disclosures, though the JSE's Shariah screen leaves the local equity sleeve leaning hard on gold and platinum miners. The governance story is the frustration: a range this size should publish its scholars and audit findings, and it does not, with only external corroboration (Mufti Yusuf Suliman's board membership) filling the gap. Members should use it, and simultaneously push their fund consultants to demand published Shariah governance.
Pros
- Brings certified Shariah options inside the umbrella funds where a large share of employed South African Muslims already save
- Genuine multi-asset construction including sukuk and Shariah property, not just screened equity
- Institutional-grade manager selection and monthly disclosure
- Both accumulation profiles (high and medium growth) for lifecycle planning
Cons
- No published Shariah board roster or annual Shariah audit, the weakest governance disclosure among major SA Shariah retirement options
- Resources-heavy local equity concentration (gold and platinum miners dominate top holdings), a structural JSE Shariah screen artefact
- Fee transparency requires product-level quotes
- No low-risk Shariah portfolio published in the range fact sheets reviewed (high and medium growth only)
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Product Details
Structure
Multi-Manager Shariah Portfolio Range (Regulation 28 Suitable)
Best For
Members of Alexforbes-administered employer funds and Alexforbes Invest retail clients who want their retirement contributions in certified Shariah portfolios without changing administrator.
Alexforbes Investments in Mpumalanga
Alexforbes Investments's Alexforbes Shariah Portfolio Range (High Growth and Medium Growth, Umbrella and Retail Retirement) accepts members from Mpumalanga, structured as a Multi-Manager Shariah Portfolio Range (Regulation 28 Suitable). Shariah retirement annuities are national products regulated under the Pension Funds Act, and contributions are tax deductible within SARS limits. Alexforbes Investments operates across South Africa, so Mpumalanga residents have full access to this product.
Our Take on Alexforbes Investments
Alexforbes matters to South African Muslims because of where it sits, not what it preaches: it administers the employer retirement funds where a huge share of the country's Muslim professionals already save, and its Shariah portfolio range converts compliance from a personal project into an investment election on an existing fund menu. The portfolios themselves are properly built: genuine multi-asset construction with local and global sukuk sleeves rather than screened equity plus cash, specialist managers per asset class, monthly fact sheets, and honest disclosure about the volatility cost of Islamic exclusions. But the Shariah range is a small specialist shelf inside one of the largest conventional investment businesses in the country, and the governance disclosure reflects that: no published scholar roster, no Shariah audit reports, and only external evidence (Mufti Yusuf Suliman's board seat, recorded in his Tazkiya biography) that a board exists at all. That is the weakest Shariah governance disclosure among SA's major halal retirement options. Members should use the range where Alexforbes already administers their fund, and simultaneously push, through their fund consultants and member representatives, for the published governance the assets deserve.
How Alexforbes Investments Works
Check your fund's investment menu
If your employer's retirement fund is Alexforbes-administered, ask your fund consultant or member portal whether the Shariah portfolio range (Shariah High Growth, Shariah Medium Growth) is on your menu; trustees can add it if not.
Elect the Shariah portfolios for your contributions
Switch existing savings and direct future contributions into the Shariah portfolios as a member investment choice, matching High Growth or Medium Growth to your horizon. Retail investors can do the same inside Alexforbes Invest retirement products.
Specialist managers run the sleeves
Alexforbes appoints and monitors specialist managers per asset class within Shariah mandates across local and global equity, sukuk and property, publishing monthly fact sheets with allocations, holdings and performance.
Plan the compliant endgame separately
At retirement, Alexforbes offers no halal annuity, so transfer to a compliant living annuity provider (Oasis Crescent Pension Annuity or the 27four Life living annuity) to keep the income phase Shariah-compliant.
Financing Structure
Alexforbes Investments runs its Shariah range as multi-manager portfolios inside a conventional institutional platform. Each portfolio allocates across specialist manager sleeves, with every sleeve confined to Shariah-compliant instruments: local equity screened per the FTSE/JSE Shariah All Share, global equity per the MSCI World Islamic index, fixed income through local and global sukuk (Dow Jones Sukuk benchmark) rather than conventional bonds, Shariah-screened listed property, and compliant cash management. The portfolios are Regulation 28 suitable for retirement money and are offered as investment options within Alexforbes-administered umbrella and standalone retirement funds and, in retail form, within Alexforbes Invest retirement products. Screening authority rests on the index methodologies and manager mandates; no in-house Shariah board is published.
In-Depth Analysis
Alexforbes is not an Islamic financial institution and does not present itself as one: it is South Africa's largest retirement fund administrator and umbrella fund provider, a JSE-listed consulting and investments group whose business is overwhelmingly conventional. Its significance for this cluster is positional. Most South Africans, Muslims included, accumulate their retirement wealth inside employer funds they did not choose, and Alexforbes administers more of those funds than anyone else. When SA's largest administrator runs a Shariah portfolio range on its investment platform, compliance stops requiring an exit (moving money to Oasis or 27four) and becomes an election on the existing menu. That distribution reality makes a modest specialist range disproportionately important.
The construction quality is real. Per the January 2026 institutional fact sheet, Shariah High Growth is a multi-asset portfolio for horizons of six years or more, benchmarked 45% FTSE/JSE Shariah All Share, 30% MSCI World Islamic, 7% local Shariah property, 13% cash at STeFI Composite minus 1%, and 5% Dow Jones Sukuk, implemented through specialist manager sleeves: 53.3% local Shariah equity, 22.0% global Shariah equity, 9.6% local sukuk, 8.6% local Shariah property and 6.4% global sukuk at the fact sheet date. The inclusion of both local and global sukuk sleeves puts it ahead of most SA competitors' balanced funds, which often approximate fixed income with cash. Shariah Medium Growth provides the moderate profile, and the fact sheets appear identically in institutional menus (including third-party funds such as the ISASA retirement fund) and in retail form for Alexforbes Invest products, whose version notes the pricing applies to retirement investment products.
The portfolio's character carries a structural caveat worth understanding: the JSE's Shariah screen excludes banks and heavily geared industrials, leaving the compliant local universe dominated by resource houses. The January 2026 top holdings tell that story: AngloGold Ashanti (6.4%), Gold Fields (6.2%), MTN (4.1%), Valterra Platinum (3.7%), Anglo American (3.6%), Northam Platinum and Impala Platinum further down. That is not an Alexforbes choice; it is what Regulation 28 compliant, JSE-screened Shariah equity looks like, and the fact sheet is honest that exclusions mean fewer assets and potentially more short-term volatility. Members should simply know their halal local sleeve is, in effect, a resources-tilted portfolio and weigh the global sleeves accordingly.
Governance is the range's genuine weakness, and it should be named precisely. Nothing in the published fact sheets or fund pages identifies a Shariah supervisory board, names a scholar, or references an annual Shariah audit; the screening authority implicitly rests on the index providers (FTSE/JSE, MSCI, Dow Jones) plus manager mandates. The only scholar-level evidence found in this research is external: the biography of Mufti Yusuf Suliman on tazkiya.co.za (crawled 2026-08-05) lists Alexander Forbes among the Shariah boards he serves, alongside Standard Bank, Bank of Maldives, Takaful Africa and GIC Re-Takaful. So oversight likely exists; disclosure does not. For SA's largest retirement administrator, that gap is material, and it contrasts sharply with Oasis publishing signed scholar confirmations for its retirement funds.
Our assessment: use Alexforbes's Shariah range for what it uniquely offers, which is compliance without relocation. A member whose employer fund is Alexforbes-administered gets properly constructed multi-asset halal portfolios with sukuk exposure by ticking a box, and that convenience compounds over a career. A member choosing freely across the market, though, should weigh Oasis (published world-class scholars, full retirement lifecycle including a compliant annuity), 27four (risk-graded range and halal living annuity) and Sygnia (explicit AAOIFI commitment at platform cost) against Alexforbes's unpublished governance and growth-only risk profiles. In all cases the retirement endgame needs planning: Alexforbes has no compliant annuity of its own, so retiring members must transfer to Oasis or 27four to annuitise halal.
Shariah Compliance Details
- Shariah compliance range published among Alexforbes Investments' institutional and retail fund fact sheets; Shariah High Growth institutional fact sheet dated January 2026 verified with full benchmark and manager allocations (crawled 2026-08-05)
- Screening embedded via index benchmarks: FTSE/JSE Shariah All Share (local equity), MSCI World Islamic (global equity), Dow Jones Sukuk (global fixed income), plus Shariah property and compliant cash mandates
- No Shariah board roster, scholar names, certificates or Shariah audit reports published in any Alexforbes material reviewed; disclosure gap flagged
- External corroboration of scholar oversight: Mufti Yusuf Suliman's biography (tazkiya.co.za, crawled 2026-08-05) lists Alexander Forbes among his Shariah board memberships
How Alexforbes Investments Compares
Against Oasis Crescent, Alexforbes wins on distribution (compliance inside existing employer funds) and loses decisively on governance transparency and lifecycle completeness, since Oasis publishes signed scholar confirmations and offers a compliant pension annuity. Against 27four, the two overlap in the employer market: 27four's Umbrella Fund embeds Shariah houseview options and its own halal living annuity, while Alexforbes offers far larger administrative scale with a thinner Shariah wrapper; a Muslim-owned employer choosing a fund should weigh 27four's Shariah-native design against Alexforbes's incumbency. Against Sygnia, Alexforbes serves group retirement money where Sygnia serves self-directed platform investors with an explicit AAOIFI commitment at lower cost. All three peers publish more Shariah governance specificity than Alexforbes does; none matches its footprint in employer funds.
The dedicated Shariah house with published global scholars and a full retirement lifecycle including a compliant annuity; requires moving money out of the employer fund environment.
Multi-manager rival with Shariah houseview options in its own umbrella fund plus a halal living annuity; Shariah-native design against Alexforbes's administrative scale.
Low-cost platform route with an explicit AAOIFI-standard balanced fund; suits self-directed RA investors rather than employer fund members.
Bottom Line
Alexforbes's Shariah range makes halal retirement saving a checkbox inside South Africa's largest fund administrator: properly built multi-asset portfolios with real sukuk sleeves, undermined by the market's weakest Shariah governance disclosure and a resources-heavy local screen. Elect it where Alexforbes already runs your fund, demand published scholars through your fund consultant, and plan a transfer to Oasis or 27four for the annuity phase.
Read full Alexforbes Investments reviewShariah Compliance & Oversight
Alexforbes does not publish a Shariah board roster on its Shariah range fact sheets or fund pages. External corroboration exists: the scholar biography of Mufti Yusuf Suliman on tazkiya.co.za lists Alexander Forbes among the Shariah boards he serves on (crawled 2026-08-05). Benchmarks embed index-level screening (FTSE/JSE Shariah All Share, MSCI World Islamic, Dow Jones Sukuk). Investors and employers should request the current Shariah governance documentation directly; the absence of published scholar names from SA's largest retirement administrator is a material disclosure gap.
2026-08-05
Why It's Halal
The portfolios invest only in Shariah-compliant instruments across every sleeve: screened local and global equities (FTSE/JSE Shariah All Share and MSCI World Islamic benchmarks embed business-activity and financial-ratio screens), sukuk rather than conventional bonds for the fixed income allocation (Dow Jones Sukuk benchmark), Shariah-screened listed property, and Shariah-compliant cash management. Specialist managers are appointed per asset class within their Shariah mandates, and the fact sheets explain that Islamic exclusions reduce the investable universe and can raise short-term volatility, an honest disclosure. Shariah board specifics are not printed on the fact sheets; external evidence (the Tazkiya scholar biography of Mufti Yusuf Suliman, crawled 2026-08-05) records that he serves on Alexander Forbes's Shariah board, but Alexforbes itself does not publish the roster, a notable transparency gap for the scale of assets involved.
Regional Availability
Alexforbes Investments serves all of South Africa
✓ Available nationwide including Mpumalanga
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NationwideFrequently Asked Questions
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