Purpose: This study aims to empirically investigate the impact of the Sharīʿah Governance Framework (SGF) on improving Sharīʿah governance practices in Islamic banks in Malaysia and in addressing its related issues. Design/methodology/approach: Data collection was carried out using a comprehensive questionnaire survey, which was developed primarily based on SGF-2010 and arguments in the literature. The sample for this study includes key functionaries in Sharīʿah governance including senior managers, Sharīʿah committee (SC) and Sharīʿah team members of Islamic banks in Malaysia. Findings: The analysis of scores obtained from the questionnaire survey–including 41 items representing current significant issues in Sharīʿah governance–indicates that SGF-2010 has been successful in achieving its objectives and in addressing related issues. The results of the paired sample t-test show significant improvements in Sharīʿah governance practices in Malaysian Islamic banks in light of the aforementioned guideline by Bank Negara Malaysia. Research limitations/implications: Findings of this research suggest that among the five essential pillars of Sharīʿah governance, namely, accountability and responsibility, independence, competence, confidentiality and transparency, most of the improvements and changes brought about by SGF-2010 are attributable to accountability and responsibility. However, there is still room for improvement in other components of the SGF, particularly with regard to transparency and the independence of the SC and Sharīʿah team. Originality/value: Given the importance of Sharīʿah governance and considering recent endeavours to improve Sharīʿah-compliant culture among Islamic banks in Malaysia, this research is among the first attempts to empirically and comprehensively delve into this subject and evaluate its main issues by directly contacting key players in the Islamic banking industry and providing first-hand highlights. This research also compares the findings based on SGF-2010 with the requirements of SGF-2017 and Sharīʿah Governance Policy Document (SGPD-2019), which were released after this research was completed, where applicable.

The aim of this research is to discuss the groundwork of building an Islamic Banking Document Screening Prototype based on a serverless architecture framework. This research first forms an algorithm for document matching based Vector Space Model (VCM) and adopts Levenshtein Distance for similarity setting. Product proposals will become a query, and policy documents by the central bank will be a corpus or database for document matching. Both the query and corpus went through preprocessing stage prior to similarity analysis. One set of queries with two sets of corpora is tested in this research to compare similarity values. Finally, a prototype of Shariah Document Screening is built based on a serverless architecture framework and ReactJS interface. This research is the first attempt to introduce a Shariah document screening prototype based on a serverless architecture technology that would be useful to the Islamic financial industry towards achieving a Shariah-compliant business. Given the development of Fintech, the output of this research study would be a complement to the existing Fintech applications, which focus on ensuring the Islamic nature of the businesses.

Does socio-Demographic Variables Matter in Explaining Issues and Challenges in Islamic Microfinance? Evidence from Malaysia