The geographical breakdown shows that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, led by Saudi Arabia, account for 35.6% of the total. But it is not just Saudi institutions providing the lead, the other Gulf states of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Qatar have significant SCAs in their systems.
In contrast, the non-GCC Middle East and North Africa (MENA) sector, which accounts for 35.3% of the total, is dominated by Iran, with only a few other relatively small Middle East players, such as Lebanon and Egypt, accounting for about 12% of the region’s total SCAs.
Likewise, the Asia sector, which contributes 23.9% of the total, is dominated by Malaysia, whose slice of the pie is more than 54% of the Asian aggregate of $119.4bn. Malaysia has been a champion of Islamic finance and wants Kuala Lumpur to be a hub for Islamic financial institutions, but has a relatively low level of SCAs compared with its total financial assets – 25.1%. However, it does have a lot of room to increase this proportion. Also in Asia, Pakistan, which comes eighth in our ranking, has only 25.5% of its assets in SCAs but, with its huge Muslim population, it is expected to increase its SCAs considerably.
Another country with a large Muslim population that is yet to see the impact of Islamic finance is Indonesia. Despite having a population of more than 220 million, Indonesia has only 2.66% in SCAs and is 18th in our ranking.
In the GCC, Kuwait, with $37.7bn in SCAs, comes ahead of the UAE with $35.4bn and Bahrain with $26.3bn. Bahrain and Dubai are concentrating on strengthening their roles as Islamic finance centres. The UAE has more SCAs than Bahrain, but Bahrain has 54 institutions in our Top 500 listing compared with 40 in the UAE. Kuwait has 48 institutions in the listing while the leading GCC state, Saudi Arabia, has 45.
The UK, with $10.4bn in SCAs, comes in 10th in our country ranking and helps to emphasise London’s role as an Islamic finance hub. Although HSBC Amanah, the Islamic side of HSBC’s business across the globe, accounts for 93% of this, the UK has another nine institutions in the listing.TABLE: TOP 25 COUNTRY RANKING BY AMOUNT OF SHARIA-COMPLIANT ASSETS
