Islamic Banking in the UK: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate the opportunities of development and growth as well as the main challenges to Islamic banking in the UK. The UK is the hub of Islamic banking and contains importance in Islamic financial sector due to its fast growing Muslim population. Islamic banking is facing some great challenges in the UK because the financial system is more favourable to conventional banking.

A qualitative study was carried out which involved nine in-depth interviews with three different groups of people such as the Banking Authorities, the Customers of Islamic banking and non-Customers of Islamic banking. The interviews are based on fundamentals of Islamic banking, basic understanding to Muslim community, information system and the growth opportunities related to products and market development as well as difficulties and challenges in the way of Islamic banking in the UK.

The research findings show that there are greater opportunities in the UK for development and growth of Islamic financial system because Muslim community is eager to take financial products and they are willing to spend their lives according to their religion. There is need to educate the Muslim community toward Islamic financial products; service providers need to improve the information system within the communities and Islamic banking institution is need to work hard for survival and compete with conventional banking system in the sector of regulations and supervisions.

Keywords: The keywords in this research are Islamic banking, Islamic finance, Muslim population, Muslim scholars, Islamic banking growth in the UK and Islamic banking challenges