Shamsher Mohamad

Governance framework in Islamic financial institutions: Theory and Practice

What are the issues of governance is discussed in this chapter. We describe the practices of world’s first Shariah Governance Framework mandated by the Malaysia Central Bank to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of financial institutions in that country. Four main functions of Shariah boards are discussed with respect to Risk Management, Review, Research and Audit, each of which has its own board. The perceptions were sought through structured interviews in 2016 of 16 members of the committee on the mandated governance framework. Though most of them perceived this framework as an important mechanism to monitor the interest of diverse stakeholders such as depositors, investment account holders and shareholders, there were also concerns on effective enforcement mechanisms as well as the need to refine continuous improvements in place to achieve the desired effect of this initiative.

Shariah boards: practical challenges for Islamic financial institutions: Theory and Practice

This chapter explains the contemporary structure of Shariah Supervisory Board in banks in an effort to ensure these banks meet the mandatory compliance requirement for all processes involved in providing products and services. The issue arose as a result of a rapid growth of Islamic finance in recent years that has attracted many financial institutions (including mainstream ones) to offer Islamic banking products and some had retrofitted conventional financial products to become compliant. Since it is relatively time consuming and costly to develop shariah-compliant product from scratch, also needing marketing efforts, so it is expedient to offer relabelled financial products as ‘compliant’ so long as it meets the compliance requirements. The approval of Shariah committees or boards are mandatory for these institutions to ensure compliance requirements. However, these committees are faced with practical challenges within the institutions in performing their responsibilities. The authors of this chapter discuss these challenges, and provide possible objective solutions to these challenges.