Highlights
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Background on Islamic banking
3- Sample and methodology
4- Empirical results
5- Conclusions
Acknowledgements
Appendix A. Definition of variables
Appendix B. Data envelopment analysis
Appendix C. Stochastic frontier analysis
References
Abstract
A number of recent studies compare the performance of Islamic and conventional banks with the use of individual financial ratios or efficiency frontier techniques. The present study extends this strand of the literature, by comparing Islamic banks, conventional banks, and banks with an Islamic window with the use of a bank overall financial strength index. This index is developed with a multicriteria methodology that allows us to aggregate various criteria capturing bank capital strength, asset quality, earnings, liquidity, and management quality in controlling expenses. We find that banks differ significantly in terms of individual financial ratios; however, the difference of the overall financial strength between Islamic and conventional banks is not statistically significant. This finding is confirmed with both univariate comparisons and in multivariate regression estimations. When we look at the bank financial strength within regions, we find that conventional banks outperform both the Islamic banks and the banks with Islamic window in the case of Asia and the Gulf Cooperation Council; however, Islamic banks perform better in the MENA and Senegal region. Second stage regressions also reveal that the bank overall financial strength index is influenced by various country-specific attributes. These include control of corruption, government effectiveness, and operation in one of the seven countries that are expected to drive the next big wave in Islamic finance.
Introduction
The market share of Islamic banking is still small in the global financial sector; however, it is growing fast in many countries, especially in the Middle East and Asian regions (International Monetary Fund, 2015). In theory, there are many differences between Islamic and conventional banks. Nonetheless, these two types of institutions compete in the same banking arena, and some claim that the Islamic ones showed stronger resilience, on average, during the global financial crisis (e.g. Hasan and Dridi, 2010). Therefore, it is not surprising that Islamic banks have attracted considerable attention by academics, policy makers, and other market practitioners.
Within this context, a growing number of studies investigates the differences in the performance between the two types of banks. For example, many studies compare the efficiency of Islamic and conventional banks. There are two issues associated with these studies. First, their findings are mixed. For instance, Srairi (2010) conclude that Islamic banks are, on average, less cost and profit efficient than conventional banks. Bader et al. (2008) conclude that there are no significant differences. Johnes et al. (2014) find that Islamic banks are typically on a par with conventional ones in terms of gross efficiency, significantly higher on net efficiency and significantly lower on type efficiency. Second, an important drawback is that while these indicators capture adequately the efficiency of banks in terms of transforming their inputs into outputs, they usually fail to take into account other aspects like risk and liquidity.