Kuala Lumpur, 24 October 2016 – The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) today launched its annual Survey on the Implementation of IFSB Standards today. The Survey is directed to the IFSB’s member regulatory and supervisory authorities (RSAs) to assess the progress made in the implementation of the IFSB’s published standards over the past one-year period.
Mr. Jaseem Ahmed, Secretary-General of the IFSB commented that “The annual exercise of the IFSB to assess the implementation of its standards has proven useful in assessing the progress made by the member supervisory authorities over time and in providing feedback on the major constrains faced by them in implementing the IFSB standards”. “The standards implementation survey”, he added “also helps to align the facilitating the implementation of standards (FIS) programme of the IFSB to the priority areas identified by the member authorities by using various initiatives such as workshops, Technical Assistance, e-learning modules and external speakers programmes”.
The IFSB has, so far, conducted four Surveys in 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015 among its member RSAs in the banking, capital market and takāful sectors. They were asked to provide inputs on their implementation status, timeframe for implementation, challenges to the implementation, and options for providing support such as workshops and Technical Assistance.
A total of 39 RSAs from 27 countries responded to the 2015 Implementation Survey, representing various regions including Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The survey showed that overall 18 RSAs have implemented at least one IFSB standard. For the IFSB standards on banking sector, nine RSAs have already implemented more than 50% (6 out of 11) standards. Similarly, all the IFSB standards on Islamic capital market and takāful sector have been implemented by four and three jurisdictions, respectively.
The 2015 Survey respondents were asked to indicate on a standard-by-standard basis their desirability for FIS workshops or direct Technical Assistance. Results showed that IFSB-10, Guiding Principles on Sharī’ah Governance Systems, was rated as the top-most priority for obtaining support. Consequently, a group of standards applicable to Islamic banking sector made up the next four standards i.e. IFSB-12 (Guiding Principles on Liquidity Risk Management), IFSB-16 (Revised Supervisory Review Standard), IFSB-15 (Revised Capital Adequacy Standard) and IFSB-1 (Risk Management Standard), respectively.
The 2015 analysis also suggested that the IFSB standards implementation rates have some correlation with the market share of the Islamic finance sectors, especially for Islamic banking and takāful. It was also observed that there has been a greater take up of the newly-introduced standards.
The results of the Implementation Survey 2016 are planned to be presented to the IFSB Technical Committee and Council in early 2017. A summary of the Survey findings will also feature in Chapter 2 of the IFSB’s annual flagship publication – the Islamic Financial Services Industry Stability Report.
For more information or queries on the Implementation Survey, please contact Mr. Esam Osamah ([email protected]).
