The Impact of Selected Macroeconomic and Bank Specific Determinants on Islamic Deposits in Malaysia

By Abdullah Ludeen

Abstract

Conventional theories have identified several factors which motivated the savers to save in conventional banks, but conceptually Islamic banks are different from their conventional counterparts. This study makes an attempt to empirically investigate whether the determinants of deposit in Islamic banks are significantly different from its conventional counterpart or otherwise. The ARDL approach ECM model are applied to address this issue, time series data from Malaysian banking system is used for analysis. According to our knowledge, this is the initial attempt to address this issue by testing both macro-economic and bank-specific factors in this particular time period (2007-2015). The results indicated that among the macro-economic variables; Industrial production index (GDP Growth) has strong impact on Islamic banking deposits while inflation (CPI) does not have significant impact on Islamic deposits.  Furthermore, among the bank-specific variables both interest rate and profit rate have strong impact on Islamic deposits. However, the most relevant finding from policy perspective is that depositors of Islamic banks in Malaysia are profit oriented, thus an increase or decrease in profit given to deposits will change their intention towards depositing in Islamic banks. Furthermore, since the customers of Islamic banks in Malaysia are divided into the categories of Muslim and non-Muslim, thus, any changes in conventional interest rate will affect the level of deposits in Islamic banks. The implication of this study suggest that Islamic banks must invest in profitable projects and provide high profit rates to their depositors, which will help them keep their depositors for long time.