Advantages Of Islamic Banking

Becoming an expert in Islamic economics and finance field is one of my long-term goals in life. I started to organize and made a plan towards achieving that dream since senior high school. The concern towards Islamic economics and finance concept, and its application for society and the country began when I was reading a book entitled Islamic banking-theory and practice. After finishing reading the book, my interest in Islamic economic and finance topics rose and strengthen my own determination to become the expert of Islamic economics and finance. The main principle of Islamic economics and finance which offers the just and ethics in economic activity, poverty alleviation through income distribution mechanism, and prevention of economic and

Banks, specifically, lessen expenses of securing and preparing data about firms and their supervisors and in this manner diminish office costs as they have created ability to recognize great and awful borrowers. Moreover, bank loaning is prone to be critical when financial specialists face ex post good risk issues, with firms of higher recognizable qualities getting from the capital business. Conversely, market-based economies encounter essentially and solidly stronger bounce back than the bank-based ones. In the US, the UK and Japan, the stock exchange assumed an imperative part in financing financial development, while the managing a banking sector assumed a more vital part in Germany, France, Japan and Korea. Besides, the managing a banking sector and stocks in every nation were corresponding to one another during the time spent monetary development aside from the US, where the two segments were gently

Islamic Banking is quite similar to a conventional bank. Only here the essential feature is that it is Interest Free i.e. it purely follows the Islamic law – Sharia’h (Rules) and guided by the Islamic Economics that forbids the both the payment and the receipt of Riba (Interest). The two main principles are basically Banks will share the Profit & Loss (enabling risk sharing) and disallow Interest in any form.

Malaysian financial system has started since before its independence in 1957, however, in those times, foreign banks were the only financial institution operating in the country. In contrast, domestic banks1 waited until 1959 to start with the implementation of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Matthews and Ismail 2006).

Islamic banking refers to a system of banking that complies with Islamic law, also known as Shariah law. The underlying principles that govern Islamic banking are mutual risk and profit sharing between the provider of capital (investor) and the user of funds (entrepreneur). In other words, it ensures an equal contribution for all parties involved, whether in profitability or in case of any loss occurred. Activities that involve interest (riba), gambling (maisir) and speculative trading (gharar) are prohibited (Bank Negara Malaysia, 2010). Islamic banking is interest free banking; making it compulsory to take active part in business profit and loss sharing. Islamic banks prefer to take less risk (Shaikh & Jalbani, 2009)

The banking system loans the fund to economic agents based on profit-risk sharing agreements. So, the loans are directed towards the production of goods and services in such a way to confirm the investment can pay for itself. The loans ultimately are paid back to the central bank. In this way, it is ensured that productive assets constantly back a society’s currency. There are two important characteristics of these loans. First,they can grow without any limitation, and second Islamic loans offer by the central bank are not only non-inflationary over time, but are counted-inflationary

Shahjanaz Kamaruddin begins this article by stating that Malaysia has developed into becoming a full-fledged Islamic financial system operating in parallel to its conventional counterpart. Islamic finance is based on the Islamic principle of Syariah which is relevant in today’s world. According to the Islamic Finance Development (IFD) Report 2014, Malaysia is the undisputed in sukuk(bond) with a 63% of global market share. Malaysia performs very well across 5 indicators which are quantitative development, knowledge, governance, CSR (corporate social responsibility) and

The Central Bank of the UAE was established in 1980 (Crystal & Peterson,2017). It is the UAE’s highest financial regulator. The Central Bank works with the state by directing changes in Monetary, Banking, and Credit-based policies appropriately. It implements those policies in accordance to the state’s current Financial and Economic needs. Moreover, the Central Bank aims to stabilize the economy and the current exchange rate by maintaining gold and other foreign currency reserves. The UAE Central Bank, “prohibits lending an amount greater than 7 percent of a bank's capital base to any single customer” (United Arab Emirates - Banking System, n.d). Furthermore, Islamic banking in the UAE has shown a boundless level of progress due to no interest fees per Sharia Law. The UAE Islamic Financial Sector was estimated to be worth around 127 Billion US Dollars in 2014, it is also the third largest Islamic market by value after Saudi Arabia and Malaysia (John,2015). In November 2011, the Central Bank introduced the IBAN system, its main purpose was to ease the process of automatic money transfers and improve the accuracy and speed of payment transactions (Standard Chartered Bank of UAE, n.d).

Now that, Islamic law has been defined and explained in detail, Islamic Banking can be observed further. There are four rules that govern investment behaviour in Islamic banking (Suleiman 2001):

The Islamic finance industry has been evolving and growing rapidly for the past decade. The recent global financial meltdown has open opportunity to Islamic finance to offer a new outlooks and effective solutions to economics problems. Economists are now looking to the east, learning lessons and seeing advantage of Islamic finance. Since then, serious research on Islamic financial system has been carried out and Islamic financial system has been an interesting area of discussion.

Islamic banks have a better N.I/ total interest Income by .2063 points, this advantage shows that Islamic banks are more efficient in making money through transactions. Though the advantage on return on assets falls by around one third to only .0120 points, but Islamic banks in regimes still have an advantage over conventional banks in maximizing the utilization of assets. Return on sales for post-crisis period are also greater for Islamic banks, the difference of almost 5.2% shows that Islamic banks have better profitability than conventional banks. Islamic banks are also 24.41% more cost efficient than conventional banks during post crisis period in regimes.

Abiding to Shariah in an overview is Prohibitions of riba, gharar and maysir, this is what distinguish Islamic finance from its conventional counterpart (Ayub, 2007). As an alternative, Islamic financial system have interest free loans, Islamic joint-ventures (musharakah/mudarabah) and trade or lease-based (murabaha/ijarah/salam) financing structures (Azmat et al. 2015). Contemporary Islamic financial institutions have developed, and continue developing, products that mirror the classical Islamic products, and evade from the association with riba, gharar and maysir (Kamla & Alsoufi 2015).

Research finding: Shariah compliance, Quality and Attractiveness of Offerings, Friendliness of bank personnel, Cost and benefit analysis and Awareness about Islamic banking.

The Islamic finance industry continues to grow following continued internationalisation efforts. Last year’s growth was an impressive 16.5%, accounting for 25.7% of total assets in the banking system. The foreign currency business also grew with assets amounting to RM 18.1 billion in 2013.

In a dual banking framework such as Malaysia, there is potential for substitution for Islamic banking services and conventional banking services. This is because both of the products share the similar features.