The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) in Kuala Lumpur announced (27 April 2015) the release of its Prudential and Structural Islamic Financial Indicators (PSIFIs) for 15 member countries, analysing their current state of financial health. Britain, France and Luxembourg, which are competing in Europe to win ever bigger slices of Islamic finance business and wean at least a part of the sector away from Asia, have yet to join the IFSB indicator system, which compares in many respects with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial indicator system. The IFSB indicators are a weighty comment, taken seriously by the industry, on the financial soundness and growth of the Islamic banking systems in 15 member countries. IFSB said its initiative was in line with Article 4 of the IFSB Articles of Agreement, which mandates the IFSB to establish a global database of the Islamic financial services industry. The indicators, called Prudential and Structural Islamic Financial Indicators (PSIFIs), are the first set of internationally comparable measures of the soundness of Islamic banking systems. The PSIFIs capture information on the size, growth and structural features of Islamic banking systems and on their macroprudential condition by looking at measures of their capital, earnings, liquidity, and exposures to various types of risks. They also cover the indicators on capital adequacy and liquidity based on newly issued IFSB Standards to complement international regulatory reforms under the Basel III regime. The indicators are part of an international effort involving the IFSB and other organisations to construct a comprehensive picture of activity in the Islamic financial services industry. Due to rapid growth and significance of Islamic finance in many jurisdictions, such information is increasingly needed to understand the structure, soundness, and growth of the Islamic finance component within the entire financial systems. The PSIFIs thus provide statistics that are useful to financial sector supervisors and policy-makers; fund providers and investors; academics and researchers; international financial press and media as well as the general public. Many of the PSIFIs are parallel to the widely used IMF Financial Soundness Indicators (FSIs) on the strength or vulnerabilities of financial systems, but are customised to the specific characteristics of Islamic banking. As such, they will serve to highlight the role of Islamic banking within national economies and permit comparisons between the conventional and Islamic banking systems. PSIFIs cover aggregated data of Islamic...