Islamic Jurisprudence and Economic Analysis of the Wakala Investment Accounts in Participation Banking

Abstract

Participation banks that evaluate the savings according to the profit-loss sharing (PLS) principle are one of the essential institutions in Turkey. However, with the regulation in 2018, these institutions started to collect funds based on wakala (agency) accounts, in addition to PLS, and this brought criticisms. There are various drawbacks in terms of the Islamic jurisdiction (fiqh) in wakala investment accounts, and there is a concern that it might open the door to diverge from the PLS principle, which is the authentic side of participation banking. The main purpose of this study is to address the functioning of wakala investment accounts in participation banks in terms of market dynamics as well as their fiqh aspects and thus to understand the issue from different dimensions. In the study, disclosed data and documents of participation banks are used. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that the wakala investment accounts have various problematic parts that differ from classical fiqh, especially the expected profit ratio. On the other hand, it was concluded that the rationalisation for the introduction of wakala investment accounts together along with the PLS accounts motivation is to keep high return, sensitive customers within the participation bank, which was raised by a temporary situation. So, that reason may cause divergence from the authenticity of the participation sector.