The Islamic Development Bank (IDB), a Jeddah-based multilateral institution, has called for the creation of a global sharia advisory board that can offer greater uniformity for the Islamic finance industry, its president said on Thursday.

A centralised format to the supervision of sharia-compliant banking products is gaining favour across the globe, as regulators seek to standardise industry practices and improve consumer perceptions.

The suggestion can easily be made these days that sukuk as a borrowing and investing instrument is well and truly coming of age.

Certainly, there are many voices denoting that the Islamic variant on conventional fixed-income is establishing itself in the financial marketplace, tapping not only into the supposed relative safe-haven appeal of bond-related assets but also the regional and demographic drivers pertaining to the Sharia-compliant counterpart.

International Islamic Liquidity Management Corp (IILM) faces a delicate task as it designs its maiden sukuk: it must make the issue attractive enough for investors to buy, but not so attractive that most of them buy to hold.

Whether it gets the balance right will affect the development of Islamic money market trading in the Gulf and South-East Asia over the coming year.

It may be an unusual career move, but becoming a shariah scholar for an Islamic bank is nice work if you can get it. A quick poll of bankers, lawyers and academics working in Islamic finance revealed unanimous agreement that shariah scholars — who approve every new Islamic banking transaction to certify its compliance to Islamic shariah law — are paid ‘a lot’, but few volunteered figures. Welcome to the opaque world of Islamic finance, and the fledgling industry’s ‘scholar problem’.

Nigeria has issued new guidelines to oversee the operation of its takaful (Islamic insurance) industry, favoring a centralised format that is gaining favour across the Islamic finance world.

Africa's top oil producer and second biggest economy is trying to establish itself as the African hub for Islamic finance, having approved rules for issuing sukuk in March.

Indonesian corporate sukuk sales are off to their best ever start and the top underwriter predicts a full-year record as $92 billion of state-backed development projects buoy issuance.

Bank Muamalat Indonesia and Adira Dinamika Multi Finance were among issuers of Rp 1.5 trillion ($154 million) of securities, Financial Services Authority data show. That compares with Rp 1.9 trillion for the whole of 2012 and a record Rp 2.3 trillion in 2008. The market is still just a fraction of Malaysia’s, where companies sold 95.8 billion ringgit ($32 billion) of sukuk last year.

Prime Minister David Cameron is looking to Southeast Asia to boost the UK’s role in Islamic finance. It is the Bank of England he needs to convince first, say Shariah-compliant lenders based in Britain.

Central bank rules require lenders to hold easy-to-sell assets as protection against short-term funding shocks. Most are off-limits for Islamic banks because they pay interest.

The prospect of higher yield in Australia is driving Islamic investors Down Under just as it is the broader global investment community, but the focus on capital-intensive industries is adding to its appeal for this source of funds.

Managers of two fledging Islamic funds set up in Australia in the past 18 months say they knew these factors presented opportunities, but they were still surprised by the level of interest from Islamic investors.

When Fabiola Nava Carrera told her friends that she was going to pursue a master of business administration degree in Islamic finance at a Malaysian university, they were taken aback.

“I was very interested in going there to see what was going on, because I knew nothing about Asian and Islamic culture,” said Ms. Carrera, a 27-year-old Mexican who had previously worked in international trade. “But my friends in Mexico couldn’t believe that I wanted to go to Malaysia, because they thought that it would be too dangerous or that the culture would be too different.”

The number of takaful operators worldwide has increased to 200, with four additional companies entering the segment compared to 196 the previous year, latest figures in 7th World Islamic Insurance Directory (WIID) have shown.

The four new takaful companies originated from North Africa, with the recent socio-political changes in the region proving positive for the nascent development of Islamic finance. Overall, the GCC continues to lead the way with 77 operators followed the Far East with 40.