The Scale of the Problem
AAOIFI has published over 100 standards and technical pronouncements across five categories: 59 Shariah standards, 33 accounting standards, 8 auditing standards, 3 ethics standards, and 14 governance standards. Each standard generates dozens of traceable obligations that an Islamic financial institution must satisfy and evidence on an ongoing basis.
The traditional approach relies on compliance teams and Shariah Supervisory Boards reviewing standards documents manually. Documents are exchanged by email, obligations are tracked in spreadsheets, and audit trails are maintained in mutable internal systems. When regulators or auditors request evidence, institutions must reconstruct a paper trail that was never designed for that purpose.
The problem compounds when institutions also need to track IFSB guidelines, ESG frameworks, and country-specific regulatory documents. Each framework adds more obligations, more stakeholders, and more surface area for gaps in the audit record.
How Extraction Works
ZeroH ingests regulatory source documents directly and produces a structured set of discrete, traceable obligations. The process runs in three stages.
Document ingestion
ZeroH accepts AAOIFI standards, IFSB guidelines, ESG frameworks, and other regulatory documents as source inputs. No manual rule entry is required. The platform reads the authoritative text and begins extraction from that source directly.
Obligation parsing
Each document is parsed into discrete obligation items. Every obligation receives a reference ID, a scope that identifies which products or processes it applies to, and applicability criteria that determine when it is triggered. The output is a structured obligation register, not a document summary.
Workflow assignment
Extracted obligations are routed into multi-stakeholder workflows that reflect the institution's governance structure: Operations, Risk, Compliance, Shariah Supervisory Board, and Audit. Each workflow step is assigned to the appropriate role and queued for action.
From Extraction to Proof
Extracting obligations is the first step. Producing verifiable evidence that those obligations were satisfied is the second.
Each workflow step in ZeroH is timestamped with the actor and decision at the moment it occurs. Once recorded, a step cannot be altered. When the Shariah Supervisory Board makes a determination, ZeroH generates a BBS+ cryptographic signature and submits it to the Hedera network.
The resulting on-chain record is immutable and independently verifiable. Regulators and auditors can confirm the record without accessing the institution's internal systems, using only the public ledger and the ZeroH-issued disclosure token.
BBS+ selective disclosure means institutions can share targeted compliance evidence, for example proof that a specific Sukuk obligation was satisfied, without revealing the full contract, counterparty details, or board deliberations. Each disclosure is logged as part of the same audit trail.
The ZeroH platform carries fatwa certification from Amanie Advisors, an independent Shariah advisory firm. UK Patent Application GB2604344.8, filed 27 February 2026, covers the cryptographic disclosure provenance system underlying this audit trail architecture.
Where This Is Deployed
ZeroH has been deployed in production environments across two jurisdictions.
QFC Digital Asset Lab, Qatar
Live deployment since September 2025 in partnership with Al Rayan Bank. ZeroH serves as the compliance and governance layer in the Qatar Financial Centre Digital Asset Lab, automating AAOIFI obligation extraction and anchoring Shariah board decisions to the Hedera blockchain. QFC designated the deployment a Digital Receipt System for Islamic finance transactions.
Bangladesh, Mudarabah Livestock Financing
Active deployment for a Mudarabah-structured livestock financing programme. ZeroH tracks obligation compliance across the financing lifecycle, with multi-stakeholder workflows and blockchain-anchored records appropriate for a development finance context.
Both deployments use the same technical pattern: AI extraction of regulatory obligations from source documents, configurable multi-stakeholder workflows, and blockchain-anchored audit trails via Hedera.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is obligation extraction?
Obligation extraction is the process of reading a regulatory standard or pronouncement and identifying every discrete requirement it places on an institution. For AAOIFI standards, this means parsing the document into individual obligations, each assigned a reference ID, scope (which products or processes it applies to), and applicability criteria. The result is a structured list of what must be done, by whom, and under what conditions, rather than a document that compliance teams must interpret manually each time.
How many AAOIFI standards are there?
AAOIFI has published over 100 standards and technical pronouncements across five categories: 59 Shariah standards, 33 accounting standards, 8 auditing standards, 3 ethics standards, and 14 governance standards. Each standard generates dozens of traceable obligations. Taken together, the full AAOIFI corpus represents a substantial body of requirements that institutions must track, satisfy, and evidence on an ongoing basis.
How does automated extraction differ from the manual approach?
The traditional approach relies on compliance teams and Shariah Supervisory Boards reviewing standards documents manually, exchanging documents by email, tracking obligations in spreadsheets, and maintaining audit trails in mutable internal systems. Reconstructing a paper trail for a regulatory audit is time-consuming and error-prone. ZeroH ingests the authoritative source documents directly and parses obligations into discrete, traceable items without requiring manual configuration. The extraction output becomes the starting point for workflow assignment and audit evidence production.
What happens after obligations are extracted?
Extracted obligations are routed into multi-stakeholder workflows that reflect an institution's governance structure: Operations, Risk, Compliance, Shariah Supervisory Board, and Audit. Each workflow step is recorded with a timestamp, actor, and decision. Once a step is recorded it cannot be altered. When the Shariah Supervisory Board makes a determination, ZeroH produces a BBS+ cryptographic signature and anchors the record to the Hedera blockchain, creating an immutable audit trail that regulators and auditors can verify independently.
How does blockchain anchoring relate to Shariah compliance evidence?
Shariah governance requires transparent, auditable records of every compliance decision. ZeroH anchors each decision to Hedera, giving it a cryptographic timestamp that cannot be altered after the fact. This converts compliance history from an editable internal database into an immutable audit trail. Regulators and auditors can verify records independently without relying solely on the institution's own systems. BBS+ selective disclosure means institutions can share targeted compliance evidence, for example proof that a specific Sukuk obligation was satisfied, without exposing the full contract or board deliberations.
How long does implementation take and is a consultant required?
ZeroH provides pre-built framework templates for AAOIFI, IFSB, and other supported standards. Institutions can begin extracting and tracking obligations using those templates without engaging external consultants or configuring rules manually. The platform is self-service by design. The QFC Digital Asset Lab deployment with Al Rayan Bank and the Bangladesh Mudarabah livestock financing deployment both use the same template-based onboarding pattern.