Studying and working in the other financial firms and the financial sector : loan officer

Fatawa Question

I live currently in the US, and was thinking of getting a job in Real Estate as a Loan Officer. Below, please find a description of what the job consists of : 1. We call on homeowners who may be interested in refinancing their home at lower interest rates. Hence, the way I look at it (and I may be wrong) is as follows : Since I have no control over completely removing interest (the bank is the lender) I at least try to help people pay less interest on their current mortgage and save them money, where applicable. So in the case above we often get customers a lower rate on the mortgage they're carrying. 2. In the current economic situation (people being laid off...) folks often find themselves in dire need for cash. So by refinancing their home, (even if it is at the same rate as they currently have, some banks would actually provide them with 10 K or 20 K liquid cash, given that they refinance their home with that bank). Note again, I'm not trying to paint a "nice and clean" picture of what a loan officer does. I'm rather offering details of what he / she really ends-up doing. In this case, although we don't always succeed in getting a lower rate for the customer, we often end-up helping him / her get their hands on some cash, so they can survive the tough economic conditions. Please advise of the "legitimacy" (Halal or Haram) of this job, as it pertains to the Islamic Shari’ah.

Fatwa

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Publication Date

2002-12-28

Main Subjects

Financial and Accounting Sciences
Religion
Islamic Studies

Topics

• Islamic jurisprudence
• Financial institutions
• Financing
• Loans
• Labour
• Real property

No. of Pages

2

Data Type

Fatawa

Language

English

Record ID

BIM-724918

• APA
• MLA
• AMA