April 14, 2009

Dubai International Financial Center plans to set up a board to encourage education in Islamic finance, an industry that is likely to grow by 15 to 20 percent this year despite the financial crisis, it said on Monday.With large conventional banks increasingly venturing into the Islamic arena, more educational and training resources were needed, Nik Norishky Thani, executive director of Islamic finance at Dubai's financial free zone, told the Reuters Islamic Banking and Finance Summit in Dubai.

The DIFC wants to see an international standard established for courses specifically focused on Islamic banking."The first step is actually to bring in education providers that we have good strong links with. We will start with having an Islamic finance education board and this will be the main platform for doing a number of interesting things," Thani said.The Islamic finance industry has grown into a $1 trillion global industry, guided by ethical investing under Islamic law, but recent poor earnings by Gulf Islamic banks due to huge exposure to the ailing property sector have thrown the regulation of the business into the spotlight.