Innovations for Liquidity Management: The Case of Islamic Banking Market of Pakistan (Case Studies in Islamic Finance)

Islamic banking is believed to have low depth and breadth in its liquidity placement instruments, constraining fluent flow of cash and near to cash assets in its money market. This research builds a novel evolutionary innovation framework on grounded narratives interviews of senior Islamic banking officials and a five-day on-site observations and documents reviews with personnel at operations Islamic banks head offices in Karachi. An evolutionary pattern of innovations in the liquidity placement instruments is found. Each innovation led to other as a pursuit of overcoming hurdles and achieving success in liquidity placements. Initially the efforts are started with i) a real sector Murabahah, to ii) interbank Musharakah & Mudarabah in Sukuk pools, iii) to Bai Muajjal of Sukuks, and iv) then Murabahah of Sukuks. Parallel to this evolution, these innovations proved embryonic for enabling innovations in liquidity placements at institutional level, regulatory level, and governmental level, to make the liquidity fluent within a multi-level Islamic banking ecosystem.