Salaam and hello, I’m Razi Fakih. I’m one of the founders of Waseeya and I’m here to share a little about how it all began. In sharing my story, I hope that it resonates with you. Hopefully, you too will see how Waseeya can help you organise, plan and secure all the things that really matter.
So, my journey began almost three decades ago. It all started when the close relative of a dear friend passed away. He was only 28 years old. As is often the way at such a young age, his affairs were not yet organised. And so, it took a while to work out what he had left behind for his dependent wife and two very young children. The incident had a profound impact on me, maybe because I was of a similar age and situation. I kept asking myself, what would happen if I wasn’t around? How would my wife cope with our (then) two sons? I decided to get my affairs in order.
It all started with a spreadsheet
I opened up a simple Excel sheet and started recording my bank accounts, assets and all other important things I thought my wife might need access to if I was suddenly not around. This is how the seed for Waseeya’s Vault was planted. At the time I was working in Islamic banking, and my work-life balance was – well – awful. We’ve all been there. I was working long hours, travelling a lot and of course had very little time for my family. I’d often return home from trips, laden with gifts as some small compensation. But, I know now that all they wanted was more quality time with me. Something had to change.
Learning to organise my affairs
As time passed and Allah continued to bless me in my career, I acquired more assets and my financial investments started to become a bit more complex. I soon realised that the basic spreadsheet just wasn’t going to cut it. I needed there to be clear instructions for my family for every investment in the case of my death.
I got practical. I got in touch with a few close friends and basically appointed them as advisors. We now had a more complex document with details of accounts, investments, rationale for those investments, and advisors assigned to each matter. As I started to become more aware of my faith, I soon realised that a ‘will’ in Islam was not about what I ‘willed’ for my family – subhanAllah, the share of my loved ones was already determined by Allah and nothing was expected of me in this regard. (Find out more about Waseeya’s will writing service here, a service that I wish I’d had when I was younger).
No, I learnt that a ‘will’ in Islam was about naseeha (advice) to my loved ones, and the right (or rather the obligation) towards the poor, and towards the needy members of my family.
And that is how Waseeya found its first beginnings.