2. Expert Insights

Islamic banking has thus far mimicked conventional banking with the result that the same problems and outcomes have surfaced, even though it is operating within an interest free framework. This apparent "convergence" has led to disaffection both among consumers of Islamic banking services and policy makers. This paper proposes a risk sharing model for Islamic banks that can potentially pull Islamic banking away from this path dependency. Under the proposal an Islamic bank's assets would be securitized by the issuance of sukuk type instruments that have the same underlying contract and average "duration" as customer financing. Small assets may have to be pooled into tranches of similar maturity before being securitized. Medium and larger assets would have papers issued directly against them. Thus, instead of depositors, an Islamic bank would have thousands of sukuk holders, all of whom share the profits and losses arising from their respective tagged asset. Other than Wadiah based safe custody accounts and current accounts against which the bank holds cash, all other depositors would be "sold" sukuk for the amount, duration and risk level that they prefer. The model has several advantages such as, minimizing systemic risk through risk dissipation and reducing the liquidity mismatch inherent to banking. The securitized papers provide new liquidity instruments and can enhance liquidity within the Islamic finance sector. Where the macro economy is concerned, the proposal enhances system stability by reducing risk concentration within the banking system, substantially widens financial inclusion by way of small denomination sukuk and minimizes the contingent liabilities of governments by avoiding the use of deposit insurance.

An abstract is written in Arabic.

Global agendas are aggressively gearing towards climate change strategies and funding the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The total investment gap for successfully achieving the 169 targets in developing countries is estimated at USD2.5 trillion per year (UNCTAD 2020). Unfortunately, limited data and challenges in data consensus have significantly inhibited monitoring bodies' ability to accurately determine how much and where it is needed. Furthermore, developing countries have been slow in developing sustainable fund structures and even slower in attracting impact investment for the SDGs (UNCTAD 2019). Impact investing is defined as "investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return" (Global Impact Investing Network 2019). Once embraced as a mainstream funding vehicle, impact or sustainable investing is expected to enable the public and private sectors in reaching their SDGs targets.

Malaysia has witnessed strong sustained growth over the last three decades, growing at an average annual rate of 5.8%. This sustained growth performance has been accompanied by significant structural shifts in the economy, reflecting the transformation of the Malaysian economy amid the changing global and domestic environment.

Malaysia has a long history of internationally valued exports, being known from the early centuries A.D. as a source of gold, tin and exotics such as birds’ feathers, edible birds’ nests, aromatic woods, tree resins etc. The commercial importance of the area was enhanced by its strategic position athwart the seaborne trade routes from the Indian Ocean to East Asia.

Islamic banks have proliferated and emerged as important players in the global banking industry especially in the Muslim-Majority countries. The recent increase in the number and market share of Islamic banks has intensified the competition in this new industry. Despite its importance, the increasing competition in Islamic banking market not only from its own Islamic peers, but also from commercial banks has not been adequately addressed nor its consequences have been investigated. This summary aims to shed the light the market structure and the evolution of the competition under dual banking system.

The doctrine of judicial precedent plays an empirical role in common law, but it has only persuasive value in European continent countries which are practicing civil law system.It has not been recognised as having binding force in Islamic judicial system. In Islam, each case has to be decided based on its own merit and previous decisions can only be considered as guidance for the future cases. This position is still being maintained by some countries such as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. In Pakistan and Nigeria the doctrine of judicial precedent is applied in deciding cases. Due to this contradiction among Islamic judicial system in various countries, a question arises relating to the feasibility of the application of the doctrine of judicial precedent in Shariah courts. Accordingly, in this paper, the factual nature of the judicial precedents in Islamic judicial systems have been examined comparatively in some details with reference to some selected countries such as Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan. This paper points out that the doctrine of stare decisis and judicial precedent can be applied in Shariah courts as guiding precedents but not as binding since there is no express prohibition in Shariah to take judicial guidance from previous decisions.

Islamic banking is called shariah compliant banking as all transactions conducted in the banking transaction starting from product offering stage until the dispute resolution stage shall comply with the principles of Islamic law. As such the objective of this paper is to find out the application of parol evidence rule to Islamic banking in Malaysia and to find out whether the application of parol eveidence is compliant with the principles of Islamic law or not.

Al-Ijarah Thumma al-Bay' (AITAB) is an innovative product designed for vehicle financing. Since its inception, AITAB has been a popular product due to the heightened demand by customers. Although AITAB is popular, it is not without condemn especially on the issue of using Rule 78, which is similar to conventional Hire-Purchase practise. This paper, attempts to address the issue of using Rule 78 which affects the customers in the case of default. A case study is used to compare the use of Rule 78 and simple profit rate methods on repaying the principal amount and the profit rate by the customer. The discussion is based upon the case on vehicle financing for three years and the impact on the defaulter on the thirteenth month of financing. The result shows the customer pays higher amount in the case of default using the Rule 78 in financing compared to simple profit rate method.

The term "Family Takaful" means "guarantee the family" which is more apt than the term "Life insurance", simply because no one can guarantee his own life, what more other people's life. What an individual participates in when he takes up a family takaful is to ensure that when he is indisposed, his immediate family will receive the benefits of the takaful that he has participated in. The benefits will be in three different forms, the accumulated contribution that he has made over the years, the profit that the accumulated contributions have earned and the takaful coverage that he has pledged to participate in.

The slides highlight: 1) funding growth without debt; 2) risk sharing contracts of Islamic finance; 3) issue and challenges.

Numerous attempts have been made to discover the effect of competition on banking stability, before and after the recent global financial crisis. Despite the rich theoretical and empirical literature on the topic, two contradictory views are observed; the competition-fragility view and the competition stability view. On one hand, the former view argues that higher competition leads to more pressure on profits and hence induces banks' management to take higher risk strategies. On the other, the supporters of the competition-stability hypothesis argue that banks in more competitive markets tend to charge lower rates, which reduces the entrepreneurs' cost of borrowing and increases the success rate of entrepreneurs' investments. Consequently, banks will face lower credit risk on their loan portfolio in more competitive markets, which should lead to more stability.

Golongan orang kurang upaya (OKU) acapkali menghadapi cabaran berat dalam memperoleh peluang pendidikan, pekerjaan, serta kualiti kehidupan saksama dengan masyarakat umum. Tanpa sokongan bersepadu, golongan rentan sebegini akan terus terpinggir dalam arus pembangunan negara. Oleh demikian, Belanjawan 2025 dibentangkan Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim menyasarkan untuk merubah situasi ini dengan memperkenalkan pelbagai inisiatif bersasar bagi meningkatkan kebajikan dan kesejahteraan OKU. Dalam Belanjawan 2025, kerajaan memperuntukkan lebih RM1.3 bilion khusus untuk golongan OKU dan kebanyakan tumpuan mungkin diberikan kepada aspek kebajikan, terdapat implikasi ekonomi lebih besar di sebalik peruntukan ini. Menerusi pemberian sokongan kewangan, peluang keusahawanan dan pendidikan kepada OKU, kerajaan juga merangsang pertumbuhan ekonomi negara. Peningkatan peruntukan bantuan OKU kepada RM1.3 bilion berbanding RM1.2 bilion pada 2024 bakal memberi kesan langsung kepada ekonomi. Sebagai contoh, golongan OKU menerima bantuan kewangan bakal mempunyai kuasa membeli lebih baik terutama barangan dan perkhidmatan asas, seterusnya menyumbang permintaan dalam ekonomi domestik, terutama dalam sektor runcit dan perkhidmatan. Apabila lebih banyak pengguna membelanjakan wang dalam ekonomi, ia merangsang aktiviti komersial. Ini adalah prinsip asas dalam ekonomi permintaan, yang mana permintaan barang dan perkhidmatan meningkat akan memacu pertumbuhan perniagaan, terutama dalam sektor seperti runcit, penjagaan kesihatan dan perkhidmatan.

As the Fintech evolution transforms the banking sectors worldwide, the players in the market are hard-pressed to experiment the tremendous opportunities that the application of the likes of Blockchain, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence et cetera would have on the financial world. As the volume of the data continue to expand, the possibilities that this raw data materializes in the form of opportunities lean towards limitless. Organizations such as financial institutions must be vigilant of the prospects that such data can reveal and the extend of leverage that they can exercise to build insights for their consumers, products, and services. Big data analytics have alone become the driving force for digital innovations and transformation of banks.

The slides "Building "true value" in a changing world: are we expecting the unexpected?" presented by Dr. Adam Ng Boon Ka at Enhancing Sustainability of Global Businesses: Role of The Islamic Capital Market, at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Risk is a major component of our environment; human beings are surrounded by innumerable risks from birth to death; humans learned to improve after experiencing misfortunes; quest for security evolved since the dawn of man’s existence. In Islamic jurisprudence, the legal maxim “al-ghorm bil ghonm“ or “no reward without risk“ holds true.

The slides outline: 1) the importance of social and environmental sustainability in Malaysia; 2) strengthening the roles and impact of Islamic finance through "value-based intermediation".

Events earlier in the year in Australia show the extent to which cross-border capital flows can arbitrage regulatory hurdles. It appears that in an effort to rein in a burgeoning housing bubble, the Australian central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has placed caps on bank lending to real estate developers. The policy, aimed largely at curbing purchases of Australian homes by foreigners through domestic borrowing, initially was effective. In addition to foreign speculators, domestic housing developers too were hit hard. Such regulation would have essentially taken the wind out of a domestic housing bubble, had it not been for foreign hedge funds and private equity. Given free capital flows, these foreign entities, which are really shadow banks, stepped in to provide the needed funding, obviously at higher interest rates. At that point of time, the foreign lenders appeared to be making huge profits from the large interest spreads. For both the foreign lenders and the foreign speculators of Australian property, the ability to sidestep the regulation appeared to be a win-win.

As the third pillar of Islam, zakat has a 1,400-year-old history in reducing inequality and redistributing wealth to at least, the deserving Qur'anic recipients (Al Qur'an, 9:60). Understood as an obligatory command, zakat appears no less than 58 times in the primary source of Islamic law, 26 times along with prayer, for instance: "So establish Salat and give Zakat, and hold fast to Allah" (Al-Qur'an 22:78). All Muslims who meet a minimum threshold of zakatable assets (nisab) are required to pay zakat annually. The oft-repeated conundrum however, is if the Zakat institution was so deeply entrenched in the Islamic law, why then do so many continue to suffer from poverty and malnutrition in even Muslim majority nations? According to a report by Pew Research Centre (2011), Muslim-majority countries are amongst the poorest in the world, with a median GDP per capita (after adjusting for purchasing power parity) of just $1,200 in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to more developed countries at $33,700 per capita.

The slides highlight 1) the importance of risk-taking; 2) variables - risk-taking, bank-specific, macroeconomic, and regulation of the study.