HAYA Financial Review — Halal Finance Products

HAYA Financial is a Sacramento-based insurance-strategy and 'financial clarity' practice founded in 2021 and led by Shakeb 'Shak' Kundiwala. Its founder's résumé is the story: a former Hewlett Packard Enterprise solution architect who became a New York Life agent (2021–2026, presented as concluded), founder and CEO of software firm Workative Inc., CEO of Shariawiz Advisory LLC — the advisory arm associated with the Islamic estate-planning platform — and founder-president of the Sacramento Metro Muslim Chamber of Commerce. He describes himself as 'a modern Muslim American.' Those affiliations give the practice genuine credibility in the Muslim community; they are also, on current evidence, the entirety of its Islamic-finance connection.

Our complete crawl of the site — all ten pages; there is no blog and no deeper content — found zero Islamic finance terminology. No halal, Sharia, takaful, or riba language appears; no scholars are cited; no permissibility positions are taken; and the estate-planning coordination service makes no mention of Islamic wills despite the founder's Shariawiz role. The closest the marketing comes is a 'values-based lens.' This matters because HAYA is sometimes characterized externally as Islamic life insurance planning: whatever the practice does in private consultations, its public materials make no religious claims at all — which is more honest than dressing conventional products in Islamic language, but means there is nothing for a halal-conscious buyer to verify.

The service model is education-first and broad for a solo practice: life insurance strategy (framed as education rather than term/whole product specifics), disability income protection review, financial coaching, estate-planning coordination (explicitly no document drafting), professional referrals, and organizing existing coverage and documents — all entered through a free Calendly 'Clarity Call.' The practice's own FAQ describes its scope as 'broader than product placement.' What's missing is the disclosure layer buyers need: no carrier appointments are named, no compensation model is explained, no license or NPN numbers are published, no legal entity is identified, no service states are listed, and the only contact is an email address. None of this is disqualifying for a young practice, but it puts the entire diligence burden on the first phone call.

The practical read for Muslim families: HAYA is a community-rooted, early-stage conventional advisory whose founder plausibly understands Islamic sensitivities better than a typical agent — but nothing on the record verifies that the advice or products follow the scholarly conditions for permissible coverage (term life by necessity, avoidance of interest-bearing cash-value products). If you engage, ask directly: which carriers, what compensation, which products, and whether recommendations follow the term-life-only position most American fiqh bodies take. For verified religious involvement in insurance, Ikhlas Insurance Group publishes its scholarly basis; for a structurally Islamic product, nothing exists in the US yet — Takaful America is trying, but remains pre-launch.