Newspaper Article

The Islamic banking and finance (IBF) sector appears to be at a crossroads. Over the last three decades, growth has been impressive, with total assets estimated at about US$2 trillion (RM8.32 trillion). Looking back, this impressive early growth appears to have been the low hanging fruit. Rapid growth came from filling an existing latent demand. Geographically speaking, even this early growth has been uneven. Growth had been most impressive in countries such as Malaysia and Bahrain, but slower in larger nations such as Turkey, Indonesia and even Saudi Arabia, where it has only recently begun to make an impact. In much of the Arab world, countries like Egypt, Tunisia and the like, IBF is yet to make a serious presence. Where IBF has succeeded, government support and favourable policymaking has made the difference.

Sukuk, which is probably Islamic finance's most popular product, has of late gone through a fair bit of innovation. As opposed to their earlier structures which were nothing but Shariah-compliant straight debt, some of today's sukuk come with a variety of features. Broadly speaking, there are two broad thrusts in the innovation that have taken place. First, the use of embedded options for better risk management/proling. Second, innovation seeking to overcome limitations like the need for physical underlying assets. Though options - especially the exchange-traded variety - are still anathema to a majority of the fuqaha (Shariah scholars) fraternity, their use within sukuk structures appears to be booming. A wide range of sukuk, originating from diverse geographic jurisdictions, come with embedded options.