Kuwait Finance House, Bahrain (“KFH-Bahrain”), a leading provider of Islamic commercial and investment banking services, and the Platinum sponsor of the 12th Annual World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC), joined together with other industry leaders to address the many opportunities as well as challenges that face the Islamic Banking and Finance Industry and its ongoing growth.
Contributing to a session entitled, “Industry in Transition: Trends and Innovations for Islamic Financial Institutions in an Increasingly Competitive Global Market,” General Manager of KFH-Bahrain, Mr Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat, spoke about the unprecedented opportunities that exist today for financial institutions such as KFH and others and highlighted a number of areas that must be focused on to ensure ongoing innovation and growth both within each and every financial institution itself but also across the entire industry.
Addressing participants, Mr Alkhayyat said, “By nature, Islamic financial intuitions must be innovative. Not only is this a new industry, in relative terms, but Islamic Banks have also had to learn to operate and adapt in regulatory and other environments that are not necessarily tailored to meet their needs and methods of operation and furthermore and importantly we must always operate within the confines of Shari’a standards. With this in mind, Islamic financial institutions have had to be extremely innovative in order to meet these challenges and thus bring the industry to where it is now.’’
Mr Alkhayyat continued, ‘’Nevertheless, while we have seen significant progress to date, it is critical that today banks in our industry also look at a number of internal factors and dedicate the necessary resources to further developing their infrastructure so that there are strong engines in place that are capable of driving further growth and innovation across the industry for the benefit of investors, shareholders and the economies in which we invest and operate.
These factors, according to Mr Alkhayyat, include: Strong leadership within the Bank that are willing to take measured risks and ‘think big’, for without these characteristics the vast opportunities that exist can’t be maximised. Further, he noted that great attention had to be paid to tapping into the global pool of talent so as to attract the best of the best in other key functions that must be present at an organisation to ensure that innovation, growth and exceptional performance can be realised. This includes strong business development teams, high-calibre financial analysts and experienced and forward thinking legal and Shari’a advisors.
Mr Alkhayyat, concluded “These components, together with the exceptional track record and progress made by Islamic financial institutions in this region already, set the stage for us to achieve significant growth in the years ahead. However, as we do so, we need to continue to ensure that we are bringing the best and brightest talent to this industry on a global level and that we are doing everything necessary to build awareness and ensure that our industry receives the same recognition, support and high levels of confidence from both the public and private sectors and investors from the world over.’’
About Kuwait Finance House, Bahrain
Kuwait Finance House, Bahrain (“KFH-Bahrain”) is a leading provider of Islamic commercial and investment banking services. Established in October 2002 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Kuwait Finance House (Kuwait) -- an industry leader for more than 25 years -- KFH-Bahrain specialises in developing and bringing to market the highest quality Shari’a compliant banking and investment products all of which are delivered by a staff of experienced and dedicated professionals with a deep understanding of the market and the customers we serve.
