As EQRAZ’s CEO, Zuhair is responsible for providing strategic leadership for the company and establishing long-range goals, strategies, plans and policies.
Zuhair has 25 years of diverse experience in industries including construction, IT, HR, and actuarial and management consulting across several countries including Canada.
Since 2007, he has launched several successful businesses in the Middle East that currently employ nearly 1,000 people. Zuhair is considered an expert in organizational development, re-engineering and process optimization. He believes “process makes perfect”. Leaders of other organizations consult him for his ideas on how to optimize productivity and efficiency in their own organizations, as well as on how to turn their corporations into centers of learning and leadership development for their employees.
This same rigour Zuhair has brought to the challenge of providing truly safe, halal mortgages to Canadians.
Zuhair enjoys fast paced, complex and unchartered environments. He focuses his efforts on “what is right”, not what is easy or convenient.
He gets to the heart of what is most important from thoughtful listening and by asking insightful questions in situations of little clarity or precedent. Zuhair can be relied on in times of crisis, time constraint or brainstorming to connect the dots from diverse points of information.
While he will always offer creative suggestions to approach issues, he always seeks to leverage the best from the status quo. With extensive personal and business networks throughout the Middle East and North America, Zuhair is ideally placed to be a “connector” for the enterprises he is involved with.
Zuhair is well-versed in Shariah finance, and the architect of EQRAZ’s unique Shariah-compliant product structure – the only one of its kind in North America. This structure allows halal financing to be issued without compromising compliance with Canadian regulations, and with the same or better product features as those offered by typical conventional mortgage products in Canada.
Zuhair is a qualified Canadian and US pensions actuary, and also holds a MEng (Hons) degree in Chemical Engineering from the Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, UK as well as an MBA degree from HEC Paris, Qatar, both being within top-ten FT rankings in their respective academic domains.
