Establishment of Islamic capital market in jurisdictions with limited Islamic financial services Case study of Maldives

Purpose – It is said that to establish an Islamic Capital Market, the first step would be to have a strong Islamic finance industry with numerous institutions offering Islamic financial services. This way it is easy to know that the demand for Islamic capital market would be there and that market will be sophisticated enough to comprehensive the nature of shariah compliant products. Generally, in most of the jurisdictions, this is how the Islamic capital market is created. The purpose of this paper is to understand the establishment of Islamic capital market in Maldives, small island nation where the establishment of Islamic capital market happened when at a time there was only one takaful company and one Islamic bank established. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a legal exploratory research that is based on the review of primary and secondary data available on the subject matter. Findings – It is anticipated that this paper will provide assistance and inspiration to those jurisdictions that aims to create Islamic capitalmarket from scratch. Originality/value – It shall be noted that there are no literature available on this subject about Maldives, and as such, this paper can be starting point to preserve knowledge in this area.