Islamic bonds ratings and the price of risk

While Islamic bonds are playing an increasingly important role for companies in emerging markets, the pricing of their risk by investors remains unexplored. We examine the impact of credit ratings on the yield-at-issuance of Islamic bonds and compare it to that of conventional bonds. Analysing 1560 Islamic bonds issued in emerging markets between 1997 and 2018 and comparing them to 837 comparable conventional bonds, we find that Islamic bonds offer lower yields than conventional bonds for a given rating, even after controlling for differences between the two populations. This suggests that investors are pricing in less credit risk in Islamic bonds. We explore several explanations for this phenomenon. We find that periods of relatively lower supply in the Islamic bond market contribute to the under-pricing of risk for a given rating. Religious preferences likely drive the segmentation of the two markets in terms of risk pricing.