Islamic Banking and Finance: Fundamentals and Contemporary Issues

(Nancy Kaufman) #1
Monzer Kahf

2.2.6 Compliance with an Institutional Approach of Information
Flow to Management to Enable it to Take Timely Decisions
Timely decision making and shorter implementation gap are quite
important elements in making profit as well as in safeguarding of capital. The
time span between a need for a decision and when it is taken cannot be
reduced unless information reaches the management in an institutional and
regular manner. Banks in the Arab world particularly often aim at getting
information to the management for seeking decisions. This approach ties the
customer’s time directly with the chain of getting to the management, such
that her transaction has to be signed by the bank’s senior management.
Servicei can be improved by adopting a method of delegating middle-rank
management to conclude provision of services to the customer, and then link
up with the senior management to ensure that the information reaches there
at the appropriate time. There is no doubt that the centralized style of
management increases the cost and engages the top management in trivialities
that take up the time that is better devoted to planning and drawing up
growth programs.


3. Experience of Some Islamic Banks in Meeting their Objectives


This section shall make an attempt to study the experiences of some
Islamic Banks in meeting their objectives as well as to measure the extent of
their success through a study of their final accounts for the period from 1999





    1. Since this period is rather short, hence, it shall not be possible to
      identify any long term trends.




I must make certain reservations beforehand about the results. It is
necessary to do so because this attempt neither covers the totality of Islamic
banks nor a random sampling of the Islamic banks has been done in this
study. It is merely confined to an analysis of some available financial
information and annual reports. The information at hand cannot explain all
the causes of differences between banks. Such explanation of the differences
requires an identification of the various factors, such as management
methods, bank’s relations with customers, employees, as well as the
employment policies. For example, the employee salary levels and other
benefits, the quality of employees’ technical qualifications, the levels of their
knowledge of banking, particularly of Islamic banking. Also important are the
different kinds of services offered to customers, methods of their delivery as
well as categories of financial products and their development over time etc.
which must also be considered in an in-depth analysis. However, any

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