The impact of inflation on Islamic banks’ home financing risk: Before and during the COVID-19 outbreak

In this research, the authors proposed a new method to evaluate borrowers’ credit risk and quality of financial statements information provided. They use qualitative and quantitative criteria to measure the quality and the reliability of its credit customers. Under this statement, the authors evaluate 35 features that are empirically utilized for forecasting the borrowers’ credit behavior of a Greek Bank. These features are initially selected according to universally accepted criteria. A set of historical data was collected and an extensive data analysis is performed by using non parametric models. Our analysis revealed that building simplified model by using only three out of the thirty five initially selected features one can achieve the same or slightly better forecasting accuracy when compared to the one achieved by the model uses all the initial features. Also, experimentally verified claim that universally accepted criteria can’t be globally used to achieve optimal results is discussed.

This study investigates the impact of political instability, macroeconomic and bank-specific factors on the profitability of Islamic banks in the context of Yemen. The study used two common measures of profitability, namely, Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) as dependent variables. Seven key independent (internal and external) variables are also used. There are five fully-fledged Islamic banks (IBs) working in Yemen. The study selected only three out of five IBs due to the availability of data for the period ranging from 2010 to 2014. The descriptive and multiple regression analyses were done. The results of the study indicate that operating efficiency and financial risk have negative and significant relationships with ROA and ROE. The findings also show that capital adequacy has a negative and insignificant relationship with ROA and ROE. Furthermore, the study reveals that assets size (LogA), assets management, liquidity and deposits have a significant and positive impact on banks’ profitability. GDP, Inflation rate (IR) and Political instability have positive and significant impact on Yemeni banks’ profitability. Based on the best knowledge of the authors, this study is considered one of the first and pioneering studies that determine the factors affecting the profitability of Islamic banks of Yemen. Therefore, the study gives good insights for the policy makers, regulators and interested parties for enhancing the profitability of Islamic banks in Yemen.

This study investigates the effect of credit risk and macroeconomic factors on profitability of 20 ASEAN banks, particularly from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines, covering the period of 2012 to 2017. The unbalanced panel data were tested for heteroscedasticity and normality. A fixed effects model and a random effects model were utilized followed by simple ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The obtained results show that credit risk and GDP growth negatively affect Return on Equity (ROE) at 5% level of significance. The inflation rate increases ROE by 0.323%. In terms of influence, inflation has the highest impact on ROE followed by GDP growth and credit risk. Credit risk and GDP growth negatively affect Return on Assets (ROA) at 5% level of significance. ROA was also influenced by an increase in inflation rate. Therefore, this study will help banks and bank managers, depositors, investors, policy makers and governments to identify factors affecting bank profitability.