About Us

Ralph Y. Liu is the Founder and Chairman of California-based Advanced e-Financial
Technologies, Inc. (AeFT). AeFT is currently a research and consultancy firm. It has been one of
the major providers for financial innovations in the new real estate and property derivatives field
since its inception in 2001. AeFT's earlier seminal REIFO venture attempt in early 2002 on
REIFO Exchange was regarded as the first online real estate futures and options exchange in
the global financial derivatives industry (See page 3 of F utures and O ptions Week, "First Online
Exchange for Real Estate Futures", Vol. 7, Number 36, September 16th, 2002 , also Risk
Magazine, "Building A Hedge for Housing", Feature, December 1st, 2002 , also John Rubino's
book, "How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate Bust - Money-Making Strategies for the End of
the Housing Bubble"; Published by Rodale, 2003; ISBN 1579548709, 9781579548704; pages
226-227 , also Risk Magazine again, "Universal Hedging", Feature by Nick Sawyer, March 6th,
2003 , also "Contract Market Viability" by Gordon C. Rausser and Henry L. Bryant, April 2004
and Comments on Session "Aggregation Issues" by Professor Robert J. Shiller, BIS Paper No.
21, Part 26, Page 338, April 2005) that fostered the subsequent interests and efforts by many
other industry participants to start exploring in this emerging field. The housing-led financial
crisis that started to appear in early 2007 has made its earlier extensive research and
development work in the preceding years coincidentally very relevant and timely.

In early 2006, AeFT pioneered the development of real estate index derivatives into more user
friendly consumer financial products. Notable examples are its patent pending SwapRent (SM)
instruments to facilitate the newly created "economic renting , owning and switching" concept as
well as the related new generation of mortgage products such as HELM, PELM and FVCM for
property owners and investors in countries located in many parts of the world. Upon introducing
this radically new simplifying and unifying consumer "economic renting/owning" or "economic
own-rent switching" concept, Ralph has been able to provide the similar economic benefits,
traditionally offered only by complicated financial derivatives in the past, to homeowners and
investors without having to resort to those traditional complex derivative instruments, since most
consumers are already very familiar with the many differences between the financial transactions
of owning and renting a real estate property.

Through its REIDeX subsidiary (a WIP prototype is currently located at http://www.REIDeX.com
for illustration and public education purposes), it provides a marketplace for the trading and
settlement support of the three types of SwapRent (SM) contracts (Generic, AG and DP) and
other property index-linked derivatives on both residential and commercial properties.

Due to the fact that the SwapRent (SM) system and its embedded mortgage product HELM were
originally invented based on an efficient flexible and reversible shared economic ownership
concept that is coincidentally consistent with the profit sharing principles of Islamic finance,
Ralph has devoted much of his recent time in early 2009 researching Islamic banking practices
in order to develop a new generation of Islamic mortgage products based on a Sharia compliant
version of SwapRent (SM) and HELM to introduce his new "economic owning and renting"
concepts to the 1.66 billion of global Muslim population.

The exciting new type of housing finance products that he created specifically under these
Islamic finance principles is called FARM (Flexible And Reversible Musharaka h /M ortgage)
or FARJ HO (Flexible And Reversible Joint Home Ownership) which provides ultimate
economic benefits to both Muslim and Western consumers alike. For the first time people could
finally own, occupy and use a residential property not only without Riba, the burdening of people
through the borrowing or lending of money, but also get to hold on to the property under
unforeseen future adverse economic situations. The successful implementation of this new
FARM or FARJHO product by homeowners could potentially make the term "mortgage
foreclosure" or "property repossession" obsolete. (For a scaled down and limited version of
current FARJHO offering, please visit http://www.InvestorsAlly.com)

Previously he was the Chief Investment Officer and an Executive Vice President of China
Everbright (Guang-da) Bank based in Beijing where he introduced the first RMB (CNY) -
denominated interest rate swap to the Beijing inter-bank community that started the domestic
derivatives industry in China. Due to the newly created ability to manage the bank's asset and
liability through these new interest rate swaps, he was able to design and launch the first long
term fixed rate residential mortgage offered by the bank to the entire homeowners market in
China as well as the first fixed rate corporate loans for corporate borrowers in the country. Using
fixed interest rates to borrow from commercial banks was finally made possible for the first time
for Chinese homeowners and corporate borrowers since the introduction of the free market
concepts in the 80's by a previously central planning society under the Communist government.
Chinese business entities finally got to compete with American, Japanese or European
companies on an equal basis at the global stage in terms of managing their own borrowing cost.
Global MNCs doing business in China could hence manage their overall interest rate risks in the
domestic currency RMB as well.

Due to this newly introduced capability for all the Chinese property mortgage borrowers to use
fixed rate mortgages which was introduced, launched by China Everbright (Guang-da) Bank in
January, 2006 and subsequently followed by many major commercial banks in China,
homeowners in China may get to avoid a similar subprime mortgage lending fiasco by relying on
transient low variable rates that happened in the US home mortgage markets. Although the RMB
lending rates have not moved sharply higher since then and the Chinese property market is
continuing to be pushed higher by short term variable borrowing rates, the low interest rate
environment may come to an end sooner or later and the credit-induced climb of the Chinese
property market may subsequently also come to a halt as a result.

With a timely development of the SwapRent (SM) transaction service for homeowners and the
SwapRent (SM) embedded HELM and FARM products in a new alternative complementary
housing finance system, banks and other financial institutions in the future may easily get to
escape the massive mortgage defaults and foreclosures that banks in places like the US, the
UK, Ireland and Dubai have encountered in recent years.

Ralph built and ran a successful Singapore-based derivatives trading/risk management
consulting and IT systems company in the 90's called ARMS (Advanced Risk Management
Solutions, Pte. Ltd.) which provided services over 26 countries covering the entire emerging
markets from Asia, Middle East to Central and Eastern Europe with a 4% global market share.
Counted among clients were many major stock exchanges, futures and options exchanges,
brokerage companies, banks and other financial institutions including central banks around the
regions.

ARMS' teams of financial engineers and traders would typically set up and run OTC derivatives
trading desks such as interest rate swaps and FX options through joint ventures with local banks
in the region. Ralph was an innovator, creator as well as a prolific writer, speaker and educator
that had helped shape the development of the financial markets in many of the Asian, Middle
Eastern, and Central / Eastern European emerging economies in the 90's. Among many of his
earlier academic publications and inventions, the VaR Derivatives and related new theories that
he created were of particular interests to the financial enterprise-wide risk management
community.

In his earlier years as a prominent derivatives banker in Asia, he was brought to Singapore from
New York by UBS while a Vice President in sales, trading and risk management. With the early
experiences gained on Wall Street, he successfully created many new innovative treasury
businesses based on structured derivatives for the Asian banking community. He then moved on
to be the Managing Director and Head of Structured Derivatives for Chase Manhattan Bank
based in Hong Kong to run the entire Asian derivatives business with many more financial
innovations and substantial business revenue results for the bank.

Ralph acquired his earlier training in financial derivatives and capital markets sales and trading
through working at many prestigious Wall Street institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Chemical
Bank (JP Morgan Chase now) and Equitable Life Assurance Society (AXA now), all based in
New York City.

Ralph received his MBA in 1987 from the Wharton Business School after he completed many
other graduate degrees and studies in computer information science and chemical engineering
from various top American universities (Penn, Michigan and Rice).

Ralph was born in Taiwan and holds both US and EU citizenships as well as an Australian,
Singapore, Hong Kong and China Permanent Residence. He speaks fluent Chinese and
understands basic Russian. He lives in Rancho de Liu in Southern California with his wife,
children & their Arabian horses.

Here below are partial lists of references.

Press, Magazine and Book Coverage