ISLAMIC FINANCE RESEARCHES
Year:2013 | Volume:2 | Issue:1 (3)|Papers Count:7

Banks' major responsibility, as the largest financial intermediaries, is to provide and allocate resources. This activity has its own risks which cause banks to seek ways of preventing or transferring them to other places. Islamic banks as substitutes of conventional banks in Islamic countries have, in their turn, faced similar risks.In regard to new evolutions in banking industry and many countries' recourse to the Islamic banking against conventional one, and the assumption that there is some remarkable difference between the two due to the existence of a legal system called Islamic contracts, it is necessary to consider the state's supervision on them and compute risks and differentiate between different types of Islamic contracts.This article, after reviewing researches done in the area of risk management in Islamic banking, first examines risks' theoretical bases and the management of various risks in usury-free banking based on different ways of resource allocation. Then research hypotheses are reviewed by using T statistical test. The results of this research imply that conventional and usury-free banking risks in Iran don't show a significant difference except in liquidity risk and operational risk.

With regard to the Islamic ban on usury, Muslim governments and companies that intend to raise funds have to utilize financial instruments which, besides having economic and financial justification, need to be consistent with the principles and provisions of the jurisprudence. Meanwhile, given the different motivations and interests of investors, diversity in financial instruments is a fundamental necessity. Yet, from among different types of Islamic financial instruments, in the Iranian capital market, only ijareh and musharekat sukuk on a small scale have been effected. Another tool currently focused on by Muslim governments and companies is the Mudaraba sukuk.Since in designing every Islamic financial instrument we must consider all juridical, legal and financial aspects of the financial model, risk management, accounting and tax, this study has examined methods of dealing with Mudaraba Sukuk risks based on library studies and descriptive-analytical method, and by using Delphi research method has identified and categorized different types of covering risks.Therefore, due to its exploratory nature, this research lacks any hypothesis, and seeks to answer the question about the methods of covering the Mudaraba Sukuk risk according to the imamiah jurisprudence.

Financial instruments are one of the most important components of any country's financial system. Without varied and efficient financial instruments, financing is disrupted. In 1980s, after many years of experimenting with Riba-based financial instruments, the idea of implementing Islamic financial instruments came into force and different kinds of Sukuk were invented as alternatives.All over the world, al-musharakah sukuk has become a favorite tool among investors. In some cases, the amount of issuance has increased due to unexpected investors' demand. Iran can be regarded as the first country which has issued bonds for funding its investments. This has been effected with the permission of two authorities: Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Securities and Exchange Organization. Bonds issued in Iran and al-musharakah sukuk issued in foreign countries have similarities and differences. This article has analyzed bonds in Iran and al-musharakah sukuk in foreign countries from different points of view: issuance statistics, definitions, components, issuance mechanisms and sharia compliance; furthermore, it offers suggestions for issuing al-musharakah sukuk in Iran and removing structural flaws of bonds currently used in the country.

Melli Bank of Iran, as the largest Islamic bank, implemented the Rastin Profit and Loss Sharing plan for the first time in the world. The purpose of this plan was to remove any trace of usury in banking operations.This article studies the relationship between service quality in this system with customer satisfaction and bank performance. To this end, we collected 35 of this type of banking customers as samples and distributed questionnaires among them. The data were analyzed with partial least squares method. The result illustrates that there is significant relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction and bank performance. Also, service quality has had the most effect on customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction has had a significant effect on banking performance in Rastin Profit and Loss Sharing Banking.

Given the importance of credit risk in the banking system, banks have always paid special attention to credit risk management and have used different tools to manage it. Using credit derivatives, especially "credit default swap" and "credit- linked note", is one of the most common tools for this purpose. This paper investigates the possibility of applying these tools in the banking system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and evaluates credit derivatives based on general conditions of contracts from the viewpoint of the jurisprudence of Shi'a. As a result, we can say that CDS is compliant with shariah, but CLN is not due to its having some usury problem.

Banking Access is a broad concept that examines issues such as physical availability of banking services for people and businesses, terms and conditions and ease of access to these services, diversity of services and financial regulatory scope. In this paper, based on global data and indicators, we survey the status of countries in the Middle East and North Africa in terms of various Banking Development indicators. At the end, we design and calculate a composite index to rank and compare their banking access. The results indicate an acceptable and medium situation of Iran among MENA countries and above the average position of MEN A countries in the world.

The purpose of this research is to examine the existence of seasonality in the stock market return, its volatility and trading amount associated with moving calendar events such as the holy month of Ramadan using a GARCH specification and data for the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) from April 1998 to June 2010. The result shows a statistically significant increase in returns and a systematic pattern of decline in volatility during Ramadan, implying a predictable variation in the market price of risk. An examination of trading data shows that this anomaly appears to be inconsistent with a decline in trading activity during Ramadan. Evidence of systematic decline in volatility during Ramadan has significant implications for pricing of securities and asset allocation decisions by investors in Islamic countries.