Masraf Al Rayan wins global award at WIBC

Last night, the 22nd annual World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) recognised excellence within the Islamic finance and banking industry in a high profile Gala Dinner at the Gulf Hotel here. 18 WIBC Performance Awards were granted to the top Islamic financial institutions based on their performance at the global, regional and national levels.

Masraf Al Rayan came away with the global award, testament to its strong performance in the financial metrics of the WIBC Leaderboard. The Leader board, 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”

Middle East Global Advisors Vice Chairman and CEO Dr Sayd Farook, 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.” Dr Farook continued: “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.”

The Awards were delivered by Central Bank of Bahrain Governor Rasheed Mohamed Al Maraj, and Khalid Hamad –Banking Supervision Executive Director for  at the Central Bank of Bahrain.