This Career Book is aimed at students of Islamic finance and helps to explain the range of interest rate securities used in conventional finance. This Career Book looks only at conventional interest rate securities as savings and investment vehicles and is structured to start at the 'short end' of the interest rate yield curve and move onto the 'long end' of the interest rate yield curve. The interest rate yield curve itself is explained in simple terms within this Career Book but in essence, the longer that money is locked away the higher the rate of interest associated with it ? reflecting the nature of risk and rewards in a conventional financial environment.

Students with a working knowledge of non-Riba bearing Shari'ah compliant instruments may also find it useful to look for parallels between some of the instruments described in this book and those that can be found in some Islamic finance markets. Indeed, in some largely Islamic finance markets, some of the instruments that are popular with savers and investors seem to have been modelled closely on their conventional counterparts.