The Analysis of Investment Account Platform (IAP) to Promote Investment Account Product in Islamic Banks

Investment Account Platform (IAP) as the first bank-intermediated financial technology platform was established to encourage Islamic banks to utilize equity-based product i.e. investment account. This paper tries to analyze the current practices of IAP as well as the issues and challenges faced by IAP and the sponsoring banks in Malaysia. Furthermore, the innovation of IAP may give insights for the advancement of investment account product in Indonesia. This study adopts qualitative research which includes interviews with the employees of IAP and the sponsoring bank. This study also gathers information from library research and webinars related to this topic. This study shows that IAP has successful projects listed on the platform; however, it still has not reached its objective to give wider financing opportunities to SMEs. There are some challenges faced by the platform and its sponsoring banks. Nevertheless, future collaboration with international institution may scale up this platform. Some important lessons can be learned for the development of an investment account platform in the future for Indonesia. This is one of the early studies that give analysis on the performance of IAP and the possible application in Indonesia.