Strategies for Western Banks to Survive in Islamic Finance Environment

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, language: English, abstract: The current rapid growth rate of Islamic banking in the world market has made the banking approach a significant contributor to economic growth. However, few studies have been done to determine the extent to which conventional banks can survive in an Islamic banking environment. The purpose of this study was to assess the financial performance of financial institutions and relate it to their involvement in Islamic banking. The study took an explorative and a quantitative approach, whereby literature was acquired from online sources for use in assessing the current state of knowledge, and financial performance data for Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were acquired from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The literature was reviewed in the literature review section while financial performance records were assessed using Microsoft Excel 2011 software package. The study findings determined that conventional banks have varying degrees of success in their Islamic banking ventures, whereby high levels of fluctuations characterize the institutions financial records. According to the exponential growth of Goldman Sachs in 2012 upon the issuance of sukuks, it is relatively easy for conventional banks to achieve growth through offering of Islamic banking products. However, according to the study findings, Islamic banking is not suitable for banks that want to achieve consistency in exponential growth, but is highly relevant for institutions that want to remain stable in their financial performance despite changes in market conditions.