ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book gives an overview of how the Malaysian banking landscape has changed since the Asian financial crisis (AFC) period. The health of the banking industry has always been of concern to both regulators and researchers alike. This is because banking industry failures have drastic, if not crippling, effects on the economy. This was evident during the 1997 AFC and the 2008 global financial crisis, where bank runs led to the impairment of the economies in developing and developed countries. It is crucial for banking sector sustainability to be capable of absorbing very high levels of unpredictable economic shock. Crises generally appear with many signals, but the questions are how the economy can detect the warning signals and how strong each country's banking sectors needs to be to absorb the shock.
