Ezamshah Ismail receives award from Malaysian Takaful Association

Source: INCEIF. INCEIF School of
Professional Studies Dean Ezamshah Ismailreceiving the Tokoh Ilmuwan Takaful 2015 award
from Dato’ Muhammad Ibrahim, Bank Negara
Malaysia Deputy Governor. Looking on is MTA
Chairman Ahmad Rizlan Azman.

INCEIF School of Professional Studies Dean Ezamshah Ismail was awarded the Tokoh Ilmuwan Takaful 2015 (Takaful Scholar 2015) by the Malaysian Takaful Association in recognition of his contribution to the growth and development of the Malaysian takaful industry.

Ezamshah first got interested in the insurance industry when he was part of the pioneer batch of students enrolled for the Diploma in Actuarial Science at University Technology Mara in 1974, when little was known about the subject. He went on to complete his degree in Mathematics at Penn State University and subsequently, Masters in Actuarial Science at Northeastern University in the US. He was later employed by one of US’s largest actuarial consulting firms in New York City before returning to Kuala Lumpur to be the Country Head where he engineered a merger with another international practice to form one of Malaysia’s successful actuarial consultancy firms.

Ezamshah was also previously President of the Life Insurance Association Malaysia and the first President of the Malaysian Financial Planning Council (MFPC). He was instrumental in developing the Shariah Registered Financial Planning qualification in MFPC.

Ezamshah will soon be publishing his latest research on application of the trust concept for takaful. His published works include Takaful: Realities and Challenges, Takaful Broking and Operational and Actuarial Aspects of Takaful.

Scholar calls for global shari'ah compliant dispute resolution mechanism

Islamic finance scholar Professor Dr Akram Laldin from Malaysia has said there is a need for a global shari'ah compliant dispute resolution mechanism at the eighth Shari'a Scholar session hosted by The Waqf Fund, a Bahrain-based special fund to support Islamic finance training, education and research.

Dr Laldin is a board member on Bank Negara Malaysia's Shari'a Advisory Council, AAOIFI and a number of Islamic financial institutions in Malaysia and globally.

Dr Laldin also stressed that shari'ah scholars hold heavy responsibility and should be proactive in developing themselves through continuous training, not just in shari'ah but also in relevant areas such as economics, finance, banking, accounting, and law in order to be able to give a religious verdict after full knowledge and understanding of the matter.

According to Dr Laldin, several key challenges are seen in shari'ah compliance, suggesting the need for a global dispute resolution body, which does not exist at this time:

• Conventional mindset of key decision-makers and a lack of conviction and belief in what they are doing
• Not following the right process
• Copying conventional products without due consideration to shari'ah
• Implementation challenges in the absence of understanding of shari'ah
• Lack of understanding of shari'ah by the auditors
• Advertising and promotion not in line with shari'ah
• Restructuring products or transactions without ensuring shari'ah compliance

Ambitious Arabic digitisation project to make more Arabic works available to the world

Source: Gale website.

Humanities and social science researcher Gale, part of Cengage Learning, announced plans for a mass digitisation programme of Arabic primary sources and reference materials, the first-of-its-kind in scale and focus. This multi-year project will incorporate millions of pages of rare and precious Arabic language collections sourced from leading institutions in the Middle East and the West. These materials will come together in a digital research environment coupled with online tools and features to allow for 21st century research.

"Our focus is on creating research products that incorporate content with global relevance and appeal," said Paul Gazzolo, Senior VP and GM, Gale. "This programme is a game-changer. Not only will it help preserve Arabic heritage in the Middle East and Islamic Studies, it will transform the historical and cultural study of the Middle East."

Gale's global product development team is working with an advisory board of expert researchers of Middle Eastern studies, including experts from the UAE, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the UK, to bring together this multi-year initiative.

The first collection, Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library, will be available in December and will be the first major searchable online archive of pre-20th century Arabic printed books available anywhere. Two subsequent parts of the collection will be released in 2016 and 2017. This full-text searchable collection will cover content from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries and will allow scholars to explore the interaction between East and West through Arabic texts, early European translations of Arabic texts, and Christian texts in Arabic.

Simon Bell, Head of Publisher Relations at the British Library said, "The British Library is delighted to continue its longstanding partnership with Gale by providing access to its unique collection of Early Arabic Printed Books based on AG Ellis' catalogue. Ranging across a wealth of topics – from Islamic literature to law and the sciences – the collection will contribute significantly to a deeper and multi-faceted understanding of the Arab world. This is without doubt a major publishing event that represents the first large-scale digitisation of searchable early Arabic books for scholars worldwide."

Scholars can search full text items in Arabic, English, French, German, Latin, Italian, Dutch and Spanish, as well as discover content in Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Syriac and 17 other languages. Interfaces in Arabic and European languages, right-to-left-read navigation of Arabic texts, an embedded Arabic keyboard and newly-developed optical character recognition software for early Arabic printed script have been introduced to ensure scholars in Arabic-speaking countries and those across the world can equally cross-search and research the range of texts.

Click here for more information on Gale's Arabic programme. 

Go for ijarah sukuk and have respected shari'ah scholars certify them: IMF working paper

The type of sukuk and the choice of shari'ah scholar could affect interest in a sukuk issue.

In Do the Type of Sukuk and Choice of Shari'a Scholar Matter?, a working paper* from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released in August 2014, authors Christophe Godlewski, Rima Turk, and Laurent Weill study a sample of 131 sukuk from eight countries from 2006 to 2013 and find both criteria do indeed matter.

Some observations from the analysis include: 

• The average coupon is above 4%, maturity is 8 years, and the average amount issued is US$1,270 million with a large standard deviation. 
• An average of three scholars certify an issuer’s sukuk. 
• On average, half of the team of scholars is from the same country as the issuer. 
• A typical scholar certifies on average 24 sukuk per year, or almost 75 issues over three years. 
• Issuing firms have issued on average more than 11 bond issues.

According to the working paper, ijarah (اجارۃ) sukuk "exert a positive influence on the stock price of the issuing firm". The authors suggest that ijarah structures may benefit the most from the expansion of sukuk markets because of the better investor reaction to them compared to other structures. 

The authors observe that sukuk in the musharakah and mudarabah formats, which are partnership contracts in which the financier and entrepreneur share profits based on pre-agreed ratios but also the losses that are proportional to their contributions (financial or physical) to the partnership, are not as popular. "Ijarah is a debt-based instrument that is not based on profit and loss sharing principles; hence, it does not suffer from the possibility of attracting borrowers of poor financial condition as would a musharakah instrument," the authors suggested.

A similar positive impact was observed with sukuk that had been certified by prominent shari’ah scholars from the same country as the sukuk issuer. In more than half of the sample, at least one scholar is from the same country as the issuer, the authors observed. 

"Our finding provides some evidence that high compensation for reputable shari’ah scholars certifying sukuk may be justified on the grounds of better valuation of issuing firms," the authors said.

*Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. The views do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF or IMF policies.