Masraf Al Rayan, a Qatar-based Islamic bank, won the award for best performing Islamic Bank globally the 22nd annual World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC)concluding today (December 3) in Bahrain.

Masraf Al Rayan was honoured for strong performance in the financial metrics of the WIBC Leaderboard.

The Leaderboard, an initiative conceived by the conveners of WIBC - Middle East Global Advisors - is a groundbreaking performance assessment tool aimed at enabling Islamic financial institutions to benchmark their performance against their peers. It formed the basis of the WIBC Performance Awards, which aggregates numerous financial metrics from the Leaderboard.

The WIBC Performance Awards represents WIBC’s a commitment to objective and quantitative approach to assessing banking performance.

Speaking on her bank’s win of the industry’s flagship award within the Southeast Asian category, the CEO of Hong Leong Islamic Bank, Raja Teh Maimunah Raja Abdul Aziz, said: “We are honoured to be recognized as the best performing bank and we believe that the recognition gained is based on our transparency and our strict adherence of Islamic banking principles which include honesty and integrity to all our stakeholders.”

“At Hong Leong Islamic Bank, we engage in proactive reporting to support the fundamental elements of corporate sustainability as well as to enhance market perceptions on Islamic finance. More importantly, an element reflecting an increased global financial reporting standards in our annual reporting is that also includes Shari’ah audit report.”

Dr Sayd Farook, vice chairman & CEO of Middle East Global Advisors, the convenors or WIBC, also highlighted the sheer importance of rigorous objective assessment underpinning the awards: “The WIBC Performance Awards are based on a solid quantitative methodology, assessing Islamic banks across more than a dozen indicators of financial performance, financial stability, governance and social responsibility. This award cannot be manipulated and is also audited by Ernst and Young.”

“This evening’s award winners should be commended on the quality and dedication of the management team and their sincerity not only to perform well, but also to do it on a sound and ethical basis,” Dr Farook added.

A total of 18 WIBC Performance Awards were granted to the top Islamic financial institutions based purely on their performance at the global, regional and national levels.

The awards were delivered by Rasheed Mohamed Al Maraj, governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain and Khalid Hamad, executive director for Banking Supervision at the Central Bank of Bahrain. – TradeArabia News Service