Market-power, stability and risk-taking: an analysis surrounding the riba-free banking

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Awatef Louhichi ◽  
Salma Louati ◽  
Younes Boujelbene

Purpose Analysis of the trade-off between competition and financial stability has been at the center of academic and policy debate for over two decades and especially since the 2007-2008 global financial crises. This study aims to provide particular attention to the Islamic banking system which principally involves with the riba-free instruments as compared to the conventional interest-based system. The results show that an increase in the concentration in the conventional banking sector can lead to the deterioration of stability through the increased prices. For Islamic banks, an increase of the market power can positively affect the banking stability. Design/methodology/approach Two complementary approaches, namely, one-step generalized method of moment (GMM) system analysis and panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) framework, were applied. Findings The results show the same effect of Islamic and conventional banks’ market power on banking soundness; yet, a different effect is displayed with non-performing loans (NPLs). In particular, the “competition–fragility” assumption for both banking industries is supported when considering z-score as the dependent variable. Including NPLs, this postulation is still approved for conventional banks; however, the “competition–stability” postulation is supported for Islamic banks. Originality/value The existent literature was scarcely interested in exploring the concept of competitivity in the context of Islamic banking sector as compared to the conventional one by applying two complementary approaches, namely, GMM and PVAR. This later allows to test the effect and the feedback effect of the competition and stability concepts.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
MUDEER AHMED KHATTAK ◽  
OMAR ALAEDDIN ◽  
MOUTAZ ABOJEIB

This research attempts to explore the impact of banking competition on financial stability employing a more precise measure of market power. It was found that Islamic banks are less stable and are enjoying lower market power. The analysis shows that higher market competition makes the banking sector vulnerable to defaults, supporting the “competition-fragility view”. This research finds no difference in the relationship for Islamic banks indicates that Islamic banks might be involved in traditional banking activities as conventional banks. The results are consistent and robust to different estimation approaches and subsamples. This research carries regulatory and policy implications.


Author(s):  
Yasushi Suzuki ◽  
S.M. Sohrab Uddin

Purpose – This paper aims to draw on the bank rent approach to evaluate the existing pattern of financing of Islamic banks and to propose a fairly new conceptualization of Islamic bank rent. Design/methodology/approach – The bank rent theory is adopted to generate the theoretical underpinnings of the issue. After that, empirical evidence from the banking sector of Bangladesh is used to support the arguments. Findings – Repeated transactions under murabaha are observed in the Islamic banking sector of Bangladesh. The asset-based financing gives the Bangladeshi Islamic banks relatively higher Islamic bank rent opportunity for protecting their “franchise value” as Shari’ah-compliant lenders, while responding to the periodic volatility in transaction costs of profit-and-loss sharing. Research limitations/implications – The bank rent approach suggests that the murabaha syndrome can be ironically justifiable. On the other hand, the current profit-and-loss sharing risk provides an idea of the difficulty in assuming the participatory financing with higher credit risk in practice. Islamic scholars and the regulatory authority need to design an appropriate financial architecture which can create different levels of rent opportunities for Islamic banks to avail the benefit from the variety of Islamic financing as declared by Islamic Shari’ah. Originality/value – This paper introduces a fairly new concept of “Islamic bank rent” to make sense of the murabaha syndrome. This approach also contributes to clarifying the unique risk and cost to be compensated with the spreads that Islamic banks are expected to earn. To draw empirical evidence, as far as it could be ascertained, the data of both Islamic banks and conventional banks with Islamic banking windows/branches are used for the first time.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hichem Hamza ◽  
Safa Kachtouli

Purpose – The expansion of the Islamic banking industry seems to accentuate the banking competition in MENA and Southeast Asia where conventional and Islamic banks coexist. In this context, the research aims\ to examine the competitive conditions and the market power of the conventional and Islamic banks during the period 2004-2009 in MENA and Southeast Asia region. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use a variety of structural and non-structural measures related to the traditional approach and the new empirical approach of the industrial organization. The methodology is based on set of measures of the competition and market power. The first measure is a set of concentration ratios (C3, C5) and Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI). The second measures are the Panzar and Ross H statistic and the Lerner index based on econometric estimations with the aim of evaluating the structure of market and measuring its power in terms of price setting. Findings – The results indicate that under the HHI index, both markets are low concentrated, while according to the concentration ratios, the Islamic market is considered as moderately concentrated. The estimations results, through the H-PR-statistic of Panzar and Ross related to degree of competition and the Lerner index of market power, indicate that both markets are characterized by a monopolistic competition and the Islamic banking expressed a high degree of market power. Research limitations/implications – The research focuses exclusively on the countries where the data are available and excludes the other countries where competition and market power might have different forms. Practical implications – In a competitive environment, each bank is required to analyze the structure of its market and competitive conditions, in order to develop a business strategy and effective action plans. In the context of the multiplication of the Islamic banks in the MENA and Southeast Asia, the enhancement of Islamic bank competitiveness by offering new products is determinant for their success. Originality/value – To the best of the authors' knowledge few studies have examined this subject in a comparative analysis between the Islamic and conventional banks. So the authors contribute to the literature on Islamic banking by considering a sample of Islamic and conventional banks operating in the same countries in order to examine the existence or not of difference between them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fayaz Ahmad Lone ◽  
Ulfat Rashid Bhat

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find out the importance of the tag “Islamic” in the title of banks. This will help to determine the future strategy of Islamic banks, while expanding to the countries where Islamic banking is seen as a religious banking and not an as an alternative approach to the conventional banking. Design/methodology/approach Adopting convenience sampling, a total of 596 customers of both Islamic and conventional banks were surveyed from four regions of Saudi Arabia (Makkah, Madinah, Riyadh and Dammam) using a self-structured questionnaire on a five-point Likert scale. Findings The results concede that Islamic banks without the tag “Islamic” and conventional banks have same customer satisfaction. There are some factors other than the tag “Islamic” which are driving customers towards Islamic banking. Those factors include physical aspects of the bank, level of satisfaction with the services, dealing and attendance by the staff and safety and security of the bank. Besides, the application of fundamental principles of Islamic banking works as a key motivation for customer satisfaction with Islamic banking. Practical implications Applying the tag “Islamic” is not as important as implementing the principles of Islamic banking. Islamic banks can survive and compete well even without using the “Islamic” tag if they implement the prime principles of Islamic banking and work on improving the factors highlighted by this study. This study can prove to be helpful in the expansion of Islamic banking in the countries where religious banking is not generally preferred by customers. Originality/value This is the first study to find out the customer satisfaction in a dual banking system (comprising of conventional banks and Islamic banks that do not use the tag “Islamic”), thereby filling the existing gap in the Islamic banking literature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasushi Suzuki ◽  
S.M. Sohrab Uddin ◽  
Pramono Sigit

Purpose This paper aims to draw upon existing debate over “financial sector rent” (bank rent) to analyze the current pattern of financing of Bangladeshi and Indonesian Islamic banks during the period of 2011 and 2015. Design/methodology/approach The empirical evidence through a comparative approach of analyzing the performance of Islamic banks with that of conventional banks in respective countries – two of the largest countries where majority of the population are Muslims – is drawn to demonstrate the objective. Findings While Islamic banks in Bangladesh are primarily concentrating on the murabaha (mark-up contract) mode of financing, some transactions under musharaka (partnership/equity-based contract) are observed in the Indonesian Islamic banking sector. This anomaly in Indonesia can be explained by the nature of their musharaka financing which is not of the purely “participatory” financing type. As a result, we can observe the quasi-murabaha syndrome in Indonesian Islamic banking sector. The concentration of asset-based financing including consumers’ financing (hire purchase) in the credit portfolio gives Islamic banks relatively higher Islamic bank rent opportunity for protecting their “franchise value” as Sharīʿah-compliant (Islamic law-compliant) lenders. However, Indonesian Islamic banks share a still infant Islamic banking market, and enjoy less rent opportunity under a severe competition with conventional banks. Research limitations/implications The bank rent approach suggests that the syndrome observed both in Bangladesh and Indonesia can be ironically justifiable. Moreover, the mode of profit-and-loss sharing provides, in practice, an idea of the difficulty in managing the participatory financing embedded with high credit risk. Under this scenario, it is necessary for Islamic scholars and the regulatory authority to design an appropriate financial architecture, enabling Islamic banks to avail the benefit from a wider variety of Sharīʿah-based Islamic financing. Originality/value This paper expands the newly emerged concept of “Islamic bank rent” to make sense of the murabaha syndrome in Bangladesh and the quasi-murabaha syndrome in Indonesia. This approach also contributes to clarifying the unique risk and cost to be compensated with the spreads that Islamic banks are expected to earn.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasushi Suzuki ◽  
S. M. Sohrab Uddin

Purpose – This paper aims to assess recent trends in lending modes and to address the reasons for and consequences of changes in Bangladesh’s Islamic banking sector. Design/methodology/approach – Theoretical discourse is used to generate an underpinning for the issues covered by the study. In addition, empirical evidence from the banking sector, including the information derived from interviews with the staff of three Islamic banks, is presented to achieve the research objectives. Findings – The findings clearly demonstrate that the Islamic banking sector has experienced a paradigm shift from participatory financing to asset-based financing. In particular, the murabaha mode of financing dominates the current lending structure, which follows the general trend of the global Islamic banking sector. Research limitations/implications – It is necessary to concentrate on the potential negative outcomes of the trade-based murabaha mode of financing in a developing country such as Bangladesh, as banks have less incentive under protective rent (profit) opportunities to train the experts to screen and monitor projects in other socially desirable sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing including the small and medium enterprises. Originality/value – Despite substantial growth of the Islamic banking sector, less research has been conducted to shed analytical light on the operations of Islamic banks from the perspective of loan disbursement to identify the disparities, if any, in between theory and practice in countries where both Islamic and conventional banks operate simultaneously. Using country-specific evidence, this study contributes to the debate by highlighting the paradigm shift of Islamic banks from participatory financing to the dominance of asset-based murabaha and other modes of lending, by identifying the fundamental causes that contribute to such a shift and by highlighting the consequences of such changes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 532-545
Author(s):  
M. Kabir Hassan ◽  
Muhammad Shahzad Ijaz ◽  
Mushtaq Hussain Khan

This study comparatively analyses the financial stability of Islamic and conventional banks in Pakistan. Using data of 29 conventional and 9 Islamic banks over 18 years, the study first estimates bank competition and stability using Lerner index and Z-Score, respectively. Generalized least squares regression is used and the coefficients are estimated by using random-effects estimator. Results of the mean comparison show that Islamic banks carry more market power (less competition) and are more stable compared to their conventional counterparts. Results of a panel regression show that competition positively affects the stability of the banking sector and this effect is higher for Islamic banks due to their market power. Results also show that bank stability in Pakistan was reduced during global crisis period; however, presence of Islamic banks contributes to the stability even during crisis. Finally, this study supports the competition-stability hypothesis for Islamic banking in Pakistan. Recommendations are given at the end.


Author(s):  
Serkan Yuksel

Purpose This paper aims to shed light on the risk structure in the presence of Islamic banking. The author concentrates on the relationship between Islamic banking and conventional banking in Turkey. Islamic banking and conventional banking are considered to be different kinds of sources for funding. Returns in the conventional banking are expected to be heavily influenced by the interest rate in the money market. However, Islamic banking returns are interest-free so that interest rate changes are not expected to affect the deposit returns in Islamic banks. Interest rates in the economy are a proxy to highlight the general risk level of the economy. By looking at the causal relationship between the deposit returns of both Islamic banks and conventional banks, it is possible to address the different types of banking in the general risk structure of the economy. This is one of the first studies to address the mentioned difference in banking sector in Turkish economy. Design/methodology/approach This paper tries to identify the direction of causality between Islamic and conventional banking term deposit rates by means of Granger Causality. Also, Granger Causality test results will guide to explore the Islamic and conventional banking deposit return linkages. The author has extended the study with vector autoregressive analysis to understand the correlation structure between conventional deposit rates and the profit–loss sharing ratio of Islamic Banks. The author has also extended this study with impulse response functions to see whether the shocks hitting into the conventional banking affect Islamic banking and vice versa. Findings The results suggest that there is no significant clear relationship between both banking sectors. This result can be interpreted, as Islamic banks do not adjust their profit–loss sharing (PLS) ratios pegged to the interest rate offered by conventional banks. Also, conventional banks determine their interest rate without any connection to the Islamic banking PLS ratios. Overall results of this study contradict the findings of studies which conclude that Islamic banking might not be different from the conventional banking. It is reported that inferences from pair-wise Granger causality alone might be spurious, as the analysis based on non-stationary series can be a consequence of time functional characteristics of the time series. Social implications The results can be taken as counter evidence to the hypothesis “Islamic banks determine their PLS ratios based on the interest rates offered by conventional banks”. This address that the Islamic banks may offer alternative financing methodology which has different procedure. Hence, Islamic finance can be taken as an alternative method with its asset-based healthier structure. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to address the Islamic versus interest-based banking difference in banking sector in Turkish economy. This paper tries to identify the direction of causality between Islamic and conventional banking term deposit rates by means of Granger causality.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rakesh Belwal ◽  
Ahmed Al Maqbali

Purpose The concept of Islamic banking (IB) as a discipline and the introduction of the full-fledged Islamic banks and Islamic windows are relatively newer developments in the banking sector in Oman. This paper aims to assess customers’ perceptions of the Islamic banks and IB windows in Oman. Design/methodology/approach Following the interpretive paradigm and an exploratory research design, data collected through personal interviews with a group of 60 respondents in two of the prominent cities in Oman were analysed qualitatively. Findings The study found that customers in Oman had mixed feelings about the Islamic Banks. While some of them were not sure if the banks follow the Islamic principles, a majority of them had not opened an account with the Islamic banks or Islamic windows. The study revealed some vulnerabilities in the areas of their operations, marketing practices, staff knowledge of products and customer-dealings, as well as customers’ understanding of Islamic banks, their principles and practices. Practical implications As the advent of IB is relatively new to Oman, the insights gained by this study will have wider implications for the growth of IB locally. The outcomes of this study would appraise the officials and regulators of Islamic banks and Islamic windows with customers’ perception of IB. The elimination of the identified weaknesses would help them to improve the knowledge, quality and the marketing and promotion of products and services while competing with the conventional banks. Originality/value This study is a pioneering effort to know the status of IB and customers’ motivations in Oman towards IB.


Author(s):  
Hajer Zarrouk ◽  
Khoutem Ben Jedidia ◽  
Mouna Moualhi

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether Islamic bank profitability is driven by same forces as those driving conventional banking in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Distinguished by its principles in conformity with sharia, Islamic banking is different from conventional banking, which is likely to affect profitability. Design/methodology/approach The paper builds on a dynamic panel data model to identify the banks’ specific determinants and the macroeconomic factors influencing the profitability of a large sample of 51 Islamic banks operating in the MENA region from 1994 to 2012. The system-generalized method of moment estimators are applied. Findings The findings reveal that profitability is positively affected by banks’ cost-effectiveness, asset quality and level of capitalization. The results also indicate that non-financing activities allow Islamic banks to earn higher profits. Islamic banks perform better in environments where the gross domestic product and investment are high. There is evidence of several elements of similarities between determinants of the profitability for Islamic and conventional banks. The inflation rate, however, is negatively associated with Islamic bank profitability. Practical Implications The authors conclude that profitability determinants did not differ significantly between Islamic and conventional banks. Many factors are deemed the same in explaining the profitability of conventional as well as Islamic banks. The findings reported in the current paper might be of interest for policy makers. It is recommended to better implement non-financing activities to improve Islamic bank profitability. Originality/value Unlike the previous empirical research, this empirical investigation assesses the issue whether Islamic banks profitability is influenced by same factors as conventional model. It enriches the literature in this regard by considering the specificities of Islamic banking to identify the determinants of profitability. Moreover, this study considers a large sample (51 Islamic banks) through a different selection of countries/banks than previous studies. In addition, the period of study considers the subprime crisis insofar it ranges from 1994 to 2012. Hence, this broader study allows the authors to draw more consistent conclusions.


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