ABSTRACT
Islamic finance in its contemporary form traces its roots to the development of an economic model from the early history of Islam, and financial tools that emerged from that model. The endowment appears to be a direct translation from equivalent documents to be found in the Islamic world at the time. Islamic finance was too niche for them to deploy precious legal and compliance personnel at a time of increased regulatory scrutiny. International banks that once operated dedicated Islamic finance teams have substantially disbanded those teams. Fintech has the advantage of democratising the provision of finance, disrupting the standard business models of banks and allowing for risk-sharing asset classes to emerge, all three of which are lacking in the present-day model of Islamic banking. Fintech platforms are often able to short-circuit the challenges of contract standardisation and therefore, by association, that of Shari‘ah compliance faced by banks.
