The ability of banks in giving out loans and investments depends very much on their ability of attracting deposits. Unlike its conventional counterpart, Islamic principles forbid Islamic banks to take any interest-related income amid the fact that deposits are an important source of fund for its operational and financing. Consequently, the risk of deposit withdrawal by depositors is an important aspect that should be well managed in both conventional and Islamic banking system. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the effect of selected economic and bank specific variables on deposits placed at the Islamic and conventional banks ...

The microfinance industry can reach the poor in large scale and yet attain profitability. To maintain these two objectives which is known as double bottom line, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have to find the right balance between financial sustainability and social performance. However, there have been considerable debates on whether the goals of the double bottom line have been compromised. It is argued that to attain profitability, MFIs have allegedly shifted away from its mandate of serving the poorest borrowers in pursuit of financial sustainability. This phenomenon is described as "mission drift" ...

The spotlight of this study is to examine whether environmental, social, and governance performance affects the financial performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs). The topic has been of much interest to researchers and policymakers due to increased awareness among stakeholders on the adverse social and environmental impacts of business actions. Using a dataset covering 5 years for 62 MFIs across 34 countries, we find that environmental and governance performance has no impact on the financial performance of MFIs. As for the social-financial performance nexus, our results reveal a positive relationship using the depth of outreach as proxy of social performance. However, when women empowerment is used as a proxy for social performance, evidence suggest presence of negative relationship. The study contributes to the literature by providing new evidence on the relationship between environmental, social, and governance and financial performance from microfinance industry. Our results are robust to a variety of econometric specifications and have significant policy implications for donors, investors, MFIs, and regulators.

The commercialization process and over-emphasis on sustainability apparently improve micro finance Institutions financial performance and the scale in terms of total number of borrowers and average loan size. Whether focusing on financial sustainability is necessarily at the sacrifice of serving less poor clients? Social and finance performance of MFIs depend on the belief and culture of the participant of the society? The inconsistent results of previous studies implicate that linear regressions may be insufficient to explain the sustainability-outreach linkage because of potential non-linear relationship between financial sustainability and average loan size. To solve this puzzle this study employs advanced dynamic difference GMM as well as system GMM along with non linear Hansen threshold technique. The result shows the significant effect of religion on the social and financial performance microfinance institutions, while threshold effect found insignificant. Our findings present important insights for Islamic microfinance managers and donors as well as policy makers of the country to formulate a better policy. Social performance will harmonize the financial performance of microfinance institutions, so the MFIs authorities should not be worried about the financial sustainability while focusing on outreaching the poor.