The failure of the capitalist system in financing with zero interest created a huge gap between the rich and the poor. According to the World Bank statistics of 2012 on Global Issues, more than 80% of the world's population live in countries where income inequality is very wide. As stated by the World Bank 20% of the poorest of the world's population accounts for less than 2% of the global wealth where 20% of the richest account for almost 77% of the global wealth in 2008. One of the main causes of this wealth inequalities is the lending with interest and which in turn increases the wealth of the minority rich and reduce the wealth of the mass. Such situation encourages the authors to look at the alternative financial system which has been recommended in Islam and which provides many financial products that can help not only in reducing the gap between the rich and the poor but can promote economic growth in a just sustainable manner. The main objectives of this book are to comprehensively discuss the Islamic financial products and the Islamic socio financial products using current practical cases besides highlighting their economic and social impact in various countries.

This paper aims to explore the process of digitalization of the financial services provided by Malaysian banks and FinTech companies and to address the issues and challenges they face. Both secondary and primary sources are used in this study, where the latter represented by questionnaires and in-depth interviews with the banking and FinTech practitioners. The qualitative aspects of the Analytical Network Process method are used to identify and analyze economic, regulatory, and operational issues faced by banks and FinTech institutions in the process of digitalizing financial services. The findings provide useful insights on whether the policies set by Bank Negara of Malaysia either accelerate or hinder the growth of Malaysia's digital finance sector. The challenges faced by banks and FinTech companies, while digitalizing their financial services, are quite similar. They include the concerns of cyber security, lack of customer readiness in utilizing the financial services, particularly in rural areas, and the need for financial authorities to maintain stronger consumer and investor protection due to high pace of evolution of financial technology. It was also noted that customers have evolving expectations towards digital financial services, because they want seamless digital banking solutions to meet their daily needs. Previous studies had their focus on the benefits and impact of digital finance on financial inclusion as well as financial innovation. This research takes a different approach as it reflects on the impact of digitalization of financial services provided by banks and FinTechs through the prism of customer perspective.

The rapid development of digital finance is reshaping the business model of the traditional bank industry and bringing challenges to it as well. Based on an unbalanced panel of data constructed by 36 banks in Malaysia from 2006 to 2020, this study examines the impact of financial technology on banks' stability and efficiency. We find that, compared with Islamic banks, FinTech innovation significantly improves the stability of commercial banks. Additionally, it improves the entire sample banks' efficiency calculated by the data envelopment analysis-Malmquist method, which can capture the efficiency changes from a dynamic perspective. These baseline results are affirmed by the generalized method of moment approach to mitigate potential endogeneity issues. Furthermore, the impacts of FinTech innovation on banks are heterogeneous. The high-profit banks enjoy the benefits of improving their stability level from FinTech development. However, for the small-sized and low-profit banks, FinTech innovation contributes more to improving their efficiency. Our analysis provides empirical evidence for Malaysia and similar developing countries that are receptive to FinTech development but have relatively less advanced technology infrastructure. It can also shed light on the FinTech investment decisions of bank management.

The purpose of this study is to understand and evaluate the roles and functions of the Shari'ah committee (SC) of Islamic banks (IBs) in Malaysia and to recommend a resetting of the scope of responsibilities to enable the SC to effectively respond to current market needs. A Likert-type survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to all available SC members through e-mails and online surveys as well as self-administered questionnaires. At the end of the survey, 87 useable questionnaires were collected from 161 SC members, representing a 54% response rate. This study finds that most SC members have the necessary Shari'ah qualification, and they are mostly academics with doctoral degrees. However, there is a noticeable lack of diversity in the composition of experts in the committees. Respondents indicate that their main functions are to ensure Shari'ah compliance of bank operations and product offerings. This is of course consistent with their stated functions as outlined in the Bank Negara Malaysia's Shari'ah Governance Policy Document (BNM, 2019). The study finds that SCs are not involved in product development, nor responsible for financial performance. Respondents indicate three ways to enhance the role of SCs: improving banking knowledge of the members, more engagement with the board of directors (BoDs) and broadening the functions of SCs. This study highlights two policy implications. First, there is a strategic need for IBs to consider having a diversity of expertise in the SCs while maintaining the Shari?ah experts as core members. Second, this study recommends a reset of the scope of duties of the SC to include three new areas: risk management, product development and financial performance.

The forward lease nature is normally a combination of ijarah and istisna; where the outcome will be in a form of tangible or intangible asset that can be the subject matter of business transactions. Many assets in the market can be designed based on forward lease such as airplane, ships, residential or commercial building, and the like. The forward lease is regarded as innovative structure with special feature that contributes significantly to the expansion and evolution of the Islamic finance market. Below discussion is briefly illustration on the concept of forward lease and its structuring in the Islamic capital market.