Master of Science in Islamic Finance

As new digitalization strategies storm the banking industry, banks which are behind the technological curve may struggle to keep pace. This is a well-known challenge in the Islamic banking sector in particular; however, this research shows that little is being done in order to achieve unified digitalization in operations. The 2020 Global Islamic Bankers Survey (GIBS) from CIBAFI sought opinions and data from 101 Islamic banks, which outlined both their institutions’ adoption of financial technology and their awareness of existing technologies.

The present-day financial system is being influenced by the rapid development of Fintech (financial technology), which comprises technologies created to improve and automate traditional forms of finance for businesses and consumers. The topic of Fintech as a financial disruptor is gaining popularity in line with the swift spread of digitalization across the banking industry, whereby this paper contributes to the field by presenting a novel bibliometric analysis of the academic literature related to Fintech as a financial disruptor.

This paper investigates the complementarity between the different macroprudential policies to contain bank systemic risk. We use a newly updated version of the IMF survey on Global Macroprudential Policy Instruments (GMPI). By disentangling the aggregate macroprudential policy index, we assess the complementarity between borrower-targeted and lender-targeted instruments in mitigating systemic risk arising from intra-financial system vulnerabilities.

This paper introduces the need for blockchain technology integration for Islamic financial institutions. The article presents three main applications of blockchain technology. It explains how such technology can be used in the banking and financial sectors by providing examples for each application. Given its relevancy, the paper expands on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as one of the blockchain applications. The article then discusses salient points on how the banking sector would be affected by what is described as the future of money.

The growing number of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) across jurisdictions and the sophistication of Islamic Finance instruments require standardizations or at least harmonization1 of Islamic Finance contracts and services to regulate the markets in order to promote their transparency and improve their stability and ultimately create a fair and equitable financial system.

يهدف هذا المقال لمناقشة القاعدة الاقتصادية التي بادر باقتراحها أستاذنا الجليل محمد أنس الزرقاء لتمييز المداينات الشرعية عن التمويل الربوي، ومن ثم المساهمة في ضبط المسار الاقتصادي العام للتمويل الإسلامي الذي يستربح غالبا من المداينات الشرعية. وتتركز هذه المناقشة على محورين أساسيين: (1) مدى كفاية قاعدة الزرقاء للهدف الذي وضعت من أجله. (2) مدى الحاجة إلى وضع قواعد اقتصادية أخرى قد تحتاجها المسيرة المالية الإسلامية لضبط أدائها شرعا واقتصادا، ورفع مستوى الجودة فيها.

While MSMEs form the backbone of many countries, most of them suffer from limited access to finance. We extend the literature by examining whether Islamic banks, compared to their con- ventional peers, favor more the MSMEs credit market segment in Turkey. We do this by con- sidering various aspects of the lending behavior towards MSMEs (total lending, foreign currency lending, loan commitments, loan quality, and revenues) across different MSMEs size categories (micro, small and medium-sized firms).

This study investigates how the effects of government and foreign bank ownership on private credit vary in the cases of Islamic and conventional banks using data extended from Claessens and van Horen (2014) of 29 dual banking countries from 1995 to 2017. In support of the political view of financial development, we find that the presence of state-owned Islamic banks seem to be slightly less harmful to private credit flows than their conventional peers, particularly in the period after the global financial crisis.