Islamic Financial Services

Bahrain remains a world leader in Islamic finance, boasting the highest concentration of Islamic financial institutions globally, with six licensed Islamic retail banks and 18 licensed Islamic wholesale banks. Islamic wholesale banks’ investment portfolios have begun to demonstrate promising diversification in recent times, with a shift away from risky real estate fuelling interest in other sectors. Meanwhile, in 2014 the Central Bank of Bahrain, which regulates the kingdom’s Islamic financial institutions, introduced regulatory changes aimed at ensuring best practice is applied to sharia-compliant transactions, including the issuance of sharia-compliant bonds and the Islamic insurance segment. Today takaful represents one of the fastest-growing segments of Bahrain’s insurance sector, with gross contributions of takaful companies growing 7% from $142.31m in 2012 to $151.58m in 2013, according to the central bank.

This chapter contains a dialogue between Adnan Ahmed Yousif, President and CEO, Al Baraka Banking Group; and Aabed Al-Zeera, CEO, International Investment Banking.