After a challenging period, Islamic banks can be confident of brighter prospects in the coming year. The Banker’s 2021 Top Islamic Financial Institutions rankings paints a picture of global resilience in the face of the economic challenges thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic, even as profits slipped back.
While uncertainty over the state of the global economic recovery remains, the much-improved prognosis for key Middle East and Asian economies bodes well for the world’s largest sharia-compliant lenders. Other markets outside Islamic finance’s traditional heartlands, meanwhile, continue to display impressive growth.