Expert: Islamic banks tend to develop the same products as conventional banks

Islamic bank in Indonesia should explore more products innovation to differ with the conventional banks products.

Segara Research Institute Executive Director Piter Abdullah said innovation needed to be carried out to encourage the growth of sharia banking. One of them is by digitalizing its products and services so that they can compete with conventional banks.

So far, most Islamic banks have not innovated and tend to develop products that are relatively similar to conventional banks. So, when customers want to open a savings account at a sharia bank, they will each ask about the interest benefits they will get.

If you look at the fairly high growth of sharia banks, according to Piter, this happens because the market share of sharia banks is still too small. It is proven that when the share of Islamic banks and the share volume value are already a little large, it appears that Islamic banks will find it difficult to grow even higher.

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Piter emphasized that there needs to be innovation and breakthroughs that can build sharia banks, not from interest or returns. According to him, the current selling point of sharia banks is that they prioritize sharia principles.

One of them is also related to ease of transactions, ease of banking services that sharia banks can offer. "By marrying digital and sharia, it not only provides returns but also offers ease of transactions in the current era of digital life style that customers demand, namely convenience," said Piter.

Previously, the Financial Services Authority (OJK) launched a road map for developing and strengthening sharia banking for 2023-2027, to increase the competitiveness of sharia banking.

This road map provides strategic policy direction for Islamic banks, both from the industry side or supply side and from the community side or demand side.

Chief Executive of OJK Banking Supervision, Dian Ediana Rae, said that this sharia banking roadmap is necessary because in the future sharia banking will face challenges in the form of increasingly high economic growth as Indonesia progresses to becoming a developed country.