In its pursuit to align itself to the evolving industry accounting practices and further develop a comprehensive set of financial accounting standards for the global Islamic financial industry, AAOIFI conducted a roundtable to gain industry inputs for its financial accounting standards (FASs). This roundtable was a part of a project to review and revise all the existing AAOIFI FASs. The event was attended by leading industry experts from banking, accounting, auditing and Shari’ah fields including from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the UAE.

The scope of the standards review project includes wide-ranging industry outreach involving a survey, roundtable, interviews to gather views and comments from industry practitioners. The roundtable discussed the outputs of the initial phases of the project which included a detailed analysis of each standard, as well as their benchmarking against other comparable standards and global best practices, in addition to comments received from various industry stakeholders around the globe that identified and recommended areas of improvement.

The roundtable was held at and ksupported by Al Baraka Banking Group at its headquarters in Bahrain. Mr. Adnan Ahmed Yousif, Chairman and General Manager, Al Baraka Banking Group welcomed the participants to the roundtable and emphasised the Group’s support to AAOIFI and its initiatives such as this, which strengthens dialogue and collaboration for the development of the Islamic finance industry. The roundtable was moderated by Mr. Musa Shihadeh, General Manager of Jordan Islamic Bank, Jordan and conducted by Mr. Omar Mustafa Ansari, Acting Secretary General of AAOIFI.

The Chairman of the AAOIFI Accounting Board (AAB), Mr. Hamad Al Oqab said, “it is very important for AAOIFI’s accounting board to look back and retrospect the need and relevance of its standards to the evolving global Islamic financial industry. This exercise will not help AAOIFI to address current market needs of the standards, but will also help its members to stay abreast with the global best practices, in addition to encouraging new Islamic finance markets to adopt AAOIFI accounting standards in their jurisdictions, which are relevant, progressive and in line with Shari’ah rules and principles.”

AAOIFI established a Standards Review / Revision and Recommendation Committee in May 2018, consisting of experts in the Islamic finance representing a number of jurisdictions. The roundtable achieved its objective to probe and explore views of financial statements preparers and users with regard to the practices in financial reporting of IFIs.