Oasis Crescent Oasis Crescent Retirement Annuity Fund

The Oasis Group was formed in Cape Town in June 1997 by Adam Ebrahim with his brothers Mohamed Shaheen Ebrahim and Nazeem Ebrahim, on a thesis that South Africa's Muslim community, roughly two percent of the population but commercially significant, had no regulated home for faith-compliant saving. On 31 July 1998 the group launched the Oasis Crescent Equity Fund, the first Shariah-compliant collective investment scheme registered in South Africa. That first-mover position compounded: Oasis today manages the broadest halal product set in Africa, with the group's regulated entities covering collective investments (CISCA Manager No. 24), retirement fund administration (registration 24/324 under the Pension Funds Act), long-term insurance (Oasis Crescent Insurance Ltd, registration 000996/001) and financial advice (FSP 22670).

The flagship record is the franchise's calling card. Per the Q1 2026 fact sheet, the Oasis Crescent Equity Fund returned 15.6% per annum from inception to 31 March 2026, net of fees and gross of non-permissible income: R1 million at launch became R55.1 million, against R21.9 million for the average South African general equity fund over the same period. The fund holds R6.4 billion and screens both SA and global equities through the Shariah board's methodology. The record predates and spans the dot-com crash, the 2008 crisis, the 2020 pandemic and the weak SA equity decade of the 2010s, which is precisely the kind of full-cycle evidence halal investors rarely get anywhere in the world.

The multi-asset range is built as three funds of funds at ascending risk: Balanced Stable (low equity), Balanced Progressive (medium equity, R1.4 billion) and Balanced High Equity (R267 million), each blending the underlying Crescent building blocks. All three are Regulation 28 compliant, which is what makes the Oasis Crescent Retirement Annuity Fund work: RA members allocate across these FoFs and the income fund. The R3.31 billion Oasis Crescent Income Fund is the conservative anchor, built from sukuk, Shariah-compliant income instruments and non-interest placements, with a 0.70% TER that is competitive even against conventional income funds. International exposure comes through feeder funds into the group's Irish-domiciled, FCA/Central Bank of Ireland regulated global funds: the Oasis Crescent International Feeder Fund (R1.9 billion) and the International Property Equity Feeder Fund (R515 million).

The Oasis Crescent Property Fund, listed on the JSE's AltX board in 2005 under share code OAS, is a structural rarity: a REIT that operates with zero debt. Conventional REITs are typically 30-40% geared with interest-bearing debt, which is exactly what excludes them from strict Shariah portfolios. Oasis chose to forgo leverage entirely, holding prime Western Cape retail, office and industrial assets unlevered. The trade-off is muted distribution yields relative to geared peers; the payoff is a listed property instrument that passes even conservative screens, plus resilience in rate-shock years like 2022-2023 when leveraged SA REITs were punished.

Shariah governance is the strongest disclosure story in SA asset management. The Shari'ah Advisory Board comprises Shaykh Nedham Yaqoobi of Bahrain (one of the most cited scholars in global Islamic finance, with board seats across major institutions), Shaykh Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo of the United States (long-serving secretary of the Fiqh Council of North America and author of standard references on Islamic transactional law) and Prof. Mohd Daud Bakar of Malaysia (founder of Amanie Advisors and former Shariah Advisory Council member at both the Securities Commission Malaysia and Bank Negara Malaysia). Mohamed Shaheen Ebrahim represents Oasis on the board. Signed annual compliance certificates, most recently approved in Dubai on 24 February 2025, are published on oasis.co.za for each collective investment scheme, the insurance company and the property fund manager: a level of certificate publication no other SA manager fully matches.

The critical assessment centres on cost. The equity fund's Class D TER of 2.04% (Class A 2.36%) and the FoF TERs of 1.76% to 2.04%, some including performance fees of 0.18% to 0.39%, sit at the very top of the SA Shariah fee range. Camissa runs its flagship Islamic Equity and Balanced funds at 1.04% TER, Old Mutual Albaraka's B1 classes cost 1.19% to 1.30%, and the Satrix Shari'ah Top 40 ETF charges 0.40%. Over a 30-year retirement horizon, a one-percentage-point TER gap compounds to a material fraction of final wealth, and Oasis's published outperformance record is the counterargument investors must weigh. A second irritation is fact-sheet accessibility: the group's current minimum disclosure documents are easiest to obtain from platform libraries (Marriott/ProfileData, Discovery, PSG Wealth) rather than a single public archive, and the oasiscrescent.com product pages returned errors during our crawl, though oasis.co.za carries the quarterly fund facts hub. None of this dents the compliance case; it does dent the convenience case.

Strategically, Oasis is best understood as the certainty option. Investors who want maximum assurance (elite named scholars, published certificates, every wrapper in-house, a debt-free REIT) and a manager whose entire business depends on Shariah credibility will accept the fee premium. Investors optimising for cost per unit of compliance will blend cheaper building blocks: Camissa for active funds, Satrix for passive beta, Old Mutual Albaraka for audited assurance at mid-range fees. The strongest use of Oasis in a modern SA halal portfolio is arguably the wrappers and the property fund, which have no substitutes, with the open question being whether its active equity premium continues to earn its keep.