The Islamic Finance industry is very small with respect to the demand for Shari'ah-compliant financial services (Shari'ah-compliant assets represent 1% of global financial assets).
However, the market has been growing at over 30% annually since 2000 and has not stopped yet. In our paper we estimate that there is demand for at least 150 new financial institutions in the Muslim world. There are many different ways to do that:
- Establishing Islamic windows at conventional institutions.
- Converting existing conventional banks.
- Creating greenfield Islamic financial institutions (banks, leasing companies, insurers, etc.).
Many players have already started exploring this new space but they all have to remember that they will be successful only if they adopt a structured approach to institution-building so that it can be scaled up across segments, sectors and geographies.
