HICORE: Virtual Holistic Islamic Banking System Based on Multi-Tiered SOA Approach

– Headed By Prof. Dato’ Dr. Halimah Badioze Zaman.

Interest free banks or Islamic banks have been created in many Islamic countries and in the West, many interest-free loans are made available. It is with this development, that there was a need to design and develop a truly Islamic banking system that was built based on the Syari’ah or Islamic Law. Thus, a Holistic Islamic Retail Banking System (HiCORE) was designed and developed based on the multi-tiered Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) according to Syari’ah principles.

INTRODUCTION OF RESEARCH

The need for spirituality adherence based on the philosophy of Law in Islam for the Muslim population in Malaysia, is one which is of the most difficult aspects of Islam to understand for modern westerners. This is really the ‘philosophy of law’, which provides the conceptual foundation for the Syari’ah (literally, meaning ‘road’ or ‘path’) or Divine Law in Islam (Syyed Hossein Nasr 2004).The Syari’ah opposes certain economic practices, some of which is forbidden and others discouraged. The practice of interest or usury (riba) is forbidden in the Quran and according to Islamic Law as it was forbidden in the Roman Empire, in Europe in the Middle Ages, and even in England before Henry VIII. There has been a great deal of effort during the past few decades to study the economic injunctions (in the western sense), contained in the Syari’ah , which many now call Islamic economics, and to put them into practice. Interest free banks called Islamic banks have been created in many Islamic countries and in the West, many interest-free loans are made available. It is with the development of Islamic banks, that there was a need to design and develop a truly Islamic banking system that was built based on the Syari’ah or Islamic Law.  Thus, HiCORE was designed based on the multi-tiered Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) according to Syari’ah principles .

FINDINGS OF RESEACH

HiCORE uses service-oriented computing which is an emerging computing paradigm which makes use autonomously to changes of requirements or context. Service-orientation is a design paradigm in which automation logic is created in the form of services. With the revolutionary Big Data era, it promises a world of cooperating services which are loosely coupled to enable dynamic applications to be created flexibly and more efficiently which can today deal with not just tens, but hundreds and millions of financial data (IIA 2015). Thus, HiCORE was designed and developed based on the conceptual model designed by a group of researchers at UKM to meet current needs. The whole process of development went through the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 2, so that the product developed met industry compliant and the specification needs of societal well being. HiCORE went through the rigorous evaluation process of Unit Testing, Systems Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Test (UAT). The goal of the user acceptance test (UAT), was to determine the degree of user acceptance for  three selected modules of HiCORE: Al-Wadiah Savings Account based on its features and functionalities;  Al-Mudharabah investment based on its features and functionalities; and Bai Bithamin Ajil financing based on its features and functionalities. The UAT was conducted on three different groups of panel of experts. Findings of the research found that  majority of the respondents (between 66%-73%) indicated that they were fully satisfied with the features and functionalities of the modules. Majority of the respondents (66%-73%) were fully satisfied with the features and functionalities on CIF and account opening designed for Al-Mudharabah. Investment. It was also observed that majority of the respondents (80%-86%) were fully satisfied with the features and functionalities related to CIF and application processes designed for Al-Bai Bithamin Ajil which all complied with the Syari’ah principles.

FUTURE WORKS

HiCORE was designed and developed based on the requirements of Retail banking. Thus, more work can be conducted on Treasury.  With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), there is a need to look at the possibilities of ‘Peer to Peer’ Islamic Banking System and RoboWealth Islamic management system, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) digital robot to advice customers on Islamic investments and general Islamic wealth management.