Malaysia has effectively established itself as the regional, if not global, hub for Islamic finance, which has been seeing consistently double-digit annual growth globally with current asset under management valued at more than US$400 billion (RM1.38 trillion), said Financial Insights, an IDC company.
The market analyst for Financial Insights’s Asia/Pacific banking advisory service, Abhishek Kumar, said one of the main reasons Malaysia had taken the lead in Islamic banking and finance (IBF) was because it maintained a liberal attitude towards IBF practices and had also established a firm foundation in regulation.
“The country is a pioneer in Islamic finance through its continuous innovations in the field. Other countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand are looking to replicate Malaysia’s success by actively promoting Islamic finance,” he said in a statement yesterday.
Kumar said the most recent country to enter the Islamic banking arena was Singapore.
He said the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) established its IBF subsidiary, the Islamic Bank of Asia, in mid-2007 to focus on wealth management and capital market instruments for corporate and private banking clients in the Middle East and Asia.
Via The Edge Daily.
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