Islamic Finance: A Quest for Publically Available Bank-level Data by Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou.
From the post:
Attend a seminar or read a report on Islamic finance and chances are you will come across a figure between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion, referring to the estimated size of the global Islamic assets. While these aggregate global figures are frequently mentioned, publically available bank-level data have been much harder to come by.
Considering the rapid growth of Islamic finance, its growing popularity in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries, and its emerging role in global financial industry, especially after the recent global financial crisis, it is imperative to have up-to-date and reliable bank-level data on Islamic financial institutions from around the globe.
To date, there is a surprising lack of publically available, consistent and up-to-date data on the size of Islamic assets on a bank-by-bank basis. In fairness, some subscription-based datasets, such Bureau Van Dijk’s Bankscope, do include annual financial data on some of the world’s leading Islamic financial institutions. Bank-level data are also compiled by The Banker’s Top Islamic Financial Institutions Report and Ernst & Young’s World Islamic Banking Competitiveness Report, but these are not publically available and require subscription premiums, making it difficult for many researchers and experts to access. As a result, data on Islamic financial institutions are associated with some level of opaqueness, creating obstacles and challenges for empirical research on Islamic finance.
The recent opening of the Global Center for Islamic Finance by World Bank Group President Jim Young Kim may lead to exciting venues and opportunities for standardization, data collection, and empirical research on Islamic finance. In the meantime, the Global Financial Development Report (GFDR) team at the World Bank has also started to take some initial steps towards this end.
I can think of two immediate benefits from publicly available data on Islamic financial institutions:
First, hopefully it will increase demands for meaningful transparency in Western financial institutions.
Second, it will blunt government hand waving and propaganda about the purposes of Islamic financial institutions. Which on a par with financial institutions everywhere want to remain solvent, serve the needs of their customers and play active roles in their communities. Nothing more sinister than that.
Perhaps the best way to vanquish suspicion is with transparency. Except for the fringe cases who treat lack of evidence as proof of secret evil doing.