Are the Islamic Banks Really more Profitable than the Conventional Banks in a Financial Stable Period?

The international banking sector is dominated by the conventional banks but the global market share of the Islamic banks is increasing gradually. This study determines which model maximizes a bank’s profitability in several heterogeneous contexts and over a financial stable period (2010-2018). Most previous studies examined banking profitability in commercial conventional and Islamic banks providing a limited literature. We retained three categories for each type of banks (commercial, investment and universal) because of the predominance of these categories in the money market. Within the framework of this study, two samples were taken from two reference populations. Basic populations were composed of all active conventional and Islamic banks existing in the selected countries. The choice of the banks is limited to the countries whose banking structures incorporate simultaneously the two types of banks independently of the proportion of each system in each country banking market. We then reduced the size of each population focusing on qualitative and quantitative filtering criteria, so that each conventional bank had its Islamic equivalence in terms of capital and size in the same country. This restriction reduced the sample size to 63 large banks for each type. The two banks’ samples were selected from sixteen countries and were listed in different stock exchanges around the world. Consequently, the empirical results showed that the conventional banks were more profitable than the Islamic banks during the period of financial stability.