Building trust in Islamic finance products and services
Abstract
Purpose
With the increasing instances of malfeasance and frauds coming to light in the financial services industry, trust has become a key concern for customers. Fortunately, in the case of Islamic Finance, trust is a central tenet, and its importance can be seen through the emphasis of Amanah or trustworthiness that should be present in every financial transaction. However, it has been argued that the principle of trust has not been truly realized in Islamic Finance, or that there are still issues of distrust regarding anything which is obtrusively branded as “Islamic”. In this paper, the author will analyze the reasons for gaps between the expectations and reality of the finance industry today by looking at the main factors contributing to distrust among the different stakeholders and the perceived impact of the distrust on the industry and the general public. It then focuses on the past and ongoing efforts by academia to bridge these gaps between the different stake holder groups with the help of illustrative case studies as well as recommends future steps to be taken to ensure a stronger foundation of trust within the Islamic Finance community.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section “Trust and Islamic Capital”.
The author wishes to thank Professor Siraj Sait of University of East London for his suggestions in preparation of this paper. Thanks also to Abdul-Jalil Ibrahim, MSc student of Islamic Finance at Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, HBKU, for his special assistance in preparing the paper.
Citation
Ali, S.N. (2017), "Building trust in Islamic finance products and services", Society and Business Review, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 356-372. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBR-03-2017-0017
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited