We all know the famous Nigerian Instagram Vendor disclaimer: “Prices are subject to change without notice due to dollar rate”.
Imagine you are planning your wedding and contract a caterer for 500 guests with a quote of ₦1.5 Million. You pay the deposit, but on the morning of your wedding, the caterer arrives and says the price of tomatoes and diesel went up, making your new balance ₦2.5 Million. You are trapped because the vendor transferred all their market risk directly onto your shoulders at the last minute.
Or consider the stress of sewing a bespoke Owambe outfit. You go to a premium tailor in Lekki for custom Aso-Ebi, and they give you a “Floating Price Contract”. The starting estimate is ₦150,000, but it is tied to the exchange rate and the cost of imported silk, meaning your final bill will increase if the market changes. You sign it because that is how the industry normally works. But for the next 30 days, every time you hear that inflation has spiked or the Central Bank (CBN) adjusted rates, your heart skips a beat. By the time you collect your outfit, the bill is legally ₦210,000.
The tailor and the caterer aren’t evil; they are just passing the market risk to you.
The Reality of Variable Rate Loans
In the broader financial world, this is exactly how conventional “Variable Rate” financing works. It is a standard, globally accepted banking model where your loan repayment is tied to the Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Rate (MPR).
These floating rates are designed to protect the capital provider from inflation and market shifts by adjusting the customer’s interest rate. While this is a valid mathematical model for pricing risk, it leaves the consumer vulnerable to macroeconomic shocks they cannot control. If the economy gets turbulent or shifts, your repayment amount changes—even after you’ve signed the papers and bought the asset. You are effectively carrying the weight of the country’s economic volatility on your monthly budget, making accurate long-term budgeting impossible.
Enter The Alternative Bank: The Prohibition of Gharar
We operate on a strict anti-ambiguity rule known in Islamic Finance as the prohibition of Gharar. Gharar translates to ambiguity, excessive uncertainty, or hazard in a contract. Under our model, a contract is fundamentally void if the final price or subject matter is not absolutely clear to both parties at the moment of signing.
We believe that financing should be an anchor, not a weather vane. Because our model is based on Trade rather than Lending, we operate a Fixed-Price Boutique.
The Solution: Murabaha (Cost-Plus Financing)
The Alternative Bank replaces the variable-rate loan with a fixed-markup trade agreement called Murabaha. We buy the asset, we add a known profit margin, and we sell it to you.
We agree on the cost and our profit markup on Day 1, and that price is locked. The total debt is crystallized at the moment of signing. Once the contract is signed, the terms are carved in stone. If the global cost of silk doubles, the dollar skyrockets, or inflation triples tomorrow, your repayment amount does not change by a single Kobo.
The Luxury of Absolute Certainty
We don’t ask you to carry the stress of the global economy. We absorb the risk of future rate fluctuations, ensuring your cash flow projections remain 100% accurate. By absorbing the market volatility ourselves, we empower businesses and individuals to plan their futures with mathematical precision.
We don’t do “subject to market conditions”. In a volatile economy, predictable pricing is the ultimate competitive advantage. We offer you the most audacious product in the financial world today: Absolute Certainty.
