Islamic finance: more expectations and less disappointment

Islamic finance has grown rapidly in the recent years particularly in the Middle East and the world. It receives a great attention of bankers and financial scholars due to its stability during financial shocks and crises. The paper uses empirical analysis to test the role of Islamic banking in enhancing the economic growth of United Arab Emirates (UAE). Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross formation (GF), and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are used as representatives for economic growth, while Islamic banks’ investments are used as a representative for Islamic financial sector in the UAE. The study uses time series techniques to test the link between the variables. In the current study, co-integration along with error correction models is utilized. All econometric work is done using Eviews. The findings reveal that the causal relationship between Islamic banks’ investments and economic growth of UAE is supply-leading direction. Furthermore, the findings depict that Islamic investments have contributed in increasing investments and in bringing FDI into the country in the long-term. The study also shows that there is two-way association between Islamic banks’ investments and FDI. It shows that FDI supports Islamic banking and Islamic banking brings FDI. The paper concludes that authorities of the UAE should devote more attention for this growing banking sector by facilitating regulations for establishing new Islamic banks and then creating a suitable environment for their growth and progress in the UAE.

Market share is one of the performance indicators for the Islamic banking industry in Indonesia. Actually, the policy makers had set up the 5% market share to be achieved in 2008. Unfortunately, this target finally was met at the end of 2016. This study is going to examine the determinants of market share in the Indonesian Islamic banking industry. From the empirical result, we can see that some of the variables had an impact on market share. The variables impacting market share are the default rate, operational efficiency rate, the yield of profit sharing, and conventional bank’s interest rate. The other variables such as profitability ratio and liquidity ratio don’t have an impact on market share. The result implies that Islamic banks should strengthen the internal factors to accelerate their growth and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues and challenges of liquidity risk management in Islamic banks. At the same time, the authors are going to identify the sources of liquidity risk in Islamic banks and the common instruments used to mitigate liquidity mismatches in both sides of their balance sheets. The study is a qualitative study that uses secondary sources of data to describe and analyze risk mitigation in the Islamic banking context. Data were collected from libraries by referring to books, journals from both online and offline sources. The research objectives were addressed by critically analysing various issues from both the Islamic principles and contemporary applications. The authors found that Islamic liquidity management is an important building block for stable and efficient banking. Even though there are several attempts, for example, i) organized tawarruq (commodity murabahah), ii) salam sukuk and iii) short-term ijarah sukuk, to find solutions to the incessant problems of liquidity faced by majority of Islamic banks, there are still several underlying problems such as i) in terms of deficiency in infrastructure especially in countries where Islamic finance is still at an early stage, ii) lack of hedging instruments and iii) Shariah restrictions on some instruments. Regulatory bodies should come up with more innovative practices of Islamic liquidity management to solve unresolved theoretical issues and also meeting market requirements for liquidity.