Islamic Finance in Brunei supported by Government and Bank Islam Brunei

The Islamic finance sector is displaying steady growth in Brunei Darussalam supported by regular issuance of short term Government sukuk, and as well as by Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam (BIBD), the largest Islamic bank in the country.

The tiny energy rich state located on Borneo island in South East Asia benefits from a tiny 400,000 population enjoying one of the highest gross national income’s (GNI) in the world of $31,500.

In an interview with the Borneo Bulletin, the Managing Director of BIBD, Javed Ahmed stated Islamic Banking is continuing to grow domestically and that BIBD places particular emphasis on the use of technology to give it a competitive advantage.

“Internet Banking is Old Fashioned”

“We spend a lot of time going through the steps to ensure that it is going to make a difference to the customers,” Javed Amed said, before sharing that BIBD’s mobile banking application has already transformed the way customers conduct business with them. “Almost 90 per cent of online transactions are now performed through mobile banking, which makes Internet banking old fashioned already.”

Short Term Sukuk Programme

Lending a much needed push to the development of Islamic finance within the country, the Brunei Monetary Authority is a regular issuer of short-term sukuk in the domestic currency of the Brunei dollar. The most recent issuance was on 26 March 2015 with a B$100 million Ijara sukuk which bough total issuances to date of over 8.43 BND billion, with current outstanding of B$600 million.