Risk Management Disclosure In Malaysian Islamic Financial Institutions: Pre- And Post-Financial Crisis

Abstract

The East Asian financial crisis in 1997 and later the global financial crisis in 2007 and 2008 had a big impact on the corporate world as many companies and financial institutions collapsed during that period. Poor governance systems and lack of transparency in reporting including lack of risk reporting and disclosure were blamed as the roots of the problem. Conventional financial institutions have widely practiced risk management within their organization, but it is still under-developed in Islamic financial institutions due to new emerging market and unique business structures which are based on Shariah or Islamic law. Therefore, this study examined the risk management disclosure by all 17 Islamic financial institutions in Malaysia from 2006 to 2009, covering the period before, during, and after the global financial crisis. A disclosure checklist consists of mandatory and voluntary items developed to measure the level of risk disclosure. The descriptive result shows the risk management disclosure among the Islamic Financial Institutions was satisfactory. Analysis for a four year period revealed that the risk disclosure has greatly improved before and after crisis indicating that Islamic Financial Institutions have taken the necessary steps to improve their disclosure.