Vicary takes over as president and chief executive officer of INCEIF from Agil Natt who retired on Sunday. Natt has been heading INCEIF since its establishment in 2005 by Bank Negara Malaysia in 2005 with a generous endowment of RM500 million to offer postgraduate Islamic Finance programs, namely the Chartered Islamic Finance Professional (CIFP), a Masters in Islamic Finance and a PhD in Islamic finance. While Natt's appointment by Bank Negara Malaysia Gov. Zeti Akhtar Aziz did raise some eyebrows because he came from a conventional banking background and had hardly any experience in Islamic finance let alone academia, Vicary has actually headed two Islamic banks - Asian Finance Bank and Hong Leong Islamic Bank - albeit in an acting position, and has focused exclusively on Islamic banking and finance business since 2002 in his professional capacity as an accountant.INCEIF chancellor, Zeti, a champion of human capital development especially in the Islamic finance space and in leadership in finance in general, is too aware that competition in the Islamic finance education space is increasing, with universities and educational institutions in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, France, Luxembourg, Singapore, in addition to some in the member countries of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) all offering diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Islamic finance. Across the Straits of Malacca, for instance, competition is looming from the likes of the Singapore Management University which has set already up an Islamic Law and Finance Centre to meet the need for more finance professionals with the necessary competencies in Islamic finance, and has launched a post-graduate Masters program in Islamic law and finance, which will be open to both lawyers and non-lawyers interested in pursuing a career in this field. Singapore Management University claims to be the first institution in the world to combine Islamic law, banking and finance programs in a single, multi-disciplinary university center. In the Middle East, you have the irony of British professional institutes and universities such Cass School of Business and Management selling courses on Islamic finance to educational institutions there. While Natt should be commended for getting the INCEIF project off the ground, warts and all, for Daud Vicary this presents a timely opportunity to consolidate on both the success and to weed out the deficiencies at the Centre before striving to take the institution to its next level, presumably trying to achieve the sobriquet of really being “The Global University of Islamic Finance”, so prematurely trumpeted by Natt at the center's 2010 convocation. For the record, according to INCEIF, as at June 2011 enrolment of students reached 1,930 - comprising 1,755 Chartered Islamic Finance Professional (CIFP) students, 67 Masters in Islamic Finance and 108 PhD in Islamic Finance candidates. To date, INCEIF has turned out 113 CIFP and Masters graduates. The figures do not give the breakdown in terms of distance learning programs or attendance-based courses. For Vicary the challenges are implicit. The first is to give renewed clarity to what INCEIF actually stands for. Is it's a bricks and mortar university with a campus offering bespoke postgraduate courses in Islamic finance? Is it a university-cum distance learning institution offering postgraduate courses on Islamic Finance? What is its benchmark aspiration - an Islamic finance version of the Harvard Business School, INSEAD or the London Business School or lower? Similarly, INCEIF also suffers from an incestuous relationship with the Malaysian establishment. It was accorded the status of a university by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education and that of a "project of national interest" by Malaysian Prime Minister Mohd Najib bin Abdul Razak in 2010 with all its subsidized benefits and incentives, including tax concessions to those who make donations to INCEIF. The impression outsiders get is that INCEIF is an official Malaysian government university, for no other Malaysian university is mentioned as much as INCEIF in the speeches and dispatches of officials. As such, INCEIF needs to inject a more arms length relationship with the establishment and show greater independence in its operations including curriculum and entry requirements, which should create a truly liberalized academic and knowledge center which would also openly study difficult but pertinent issues in Islamic finance, the Muslim economies, Shariah governance, regulation, cost benefit analysis and the evaluation of the performance of the Islamic finance industry etc both in Malaysia and beyond. The fact that it is a product of Bank Negara should not detract from this. Surely the idea is to produce the next generation of Islamic bankers who are also independent in their thinking and not just following dictats or policies. It is also possible for INCEIF to focus on its core mandate and at the same time to contribute to the national effort to make Malaysia the hub for education, including in Islamic finance.A major criticism of INCEIF and Islamic finance education in general is the lack of connectivity between education and employment placement. No one expects universities to become job centers or recruitment agencies. But it is no exaggeration that many graduates who have qualifications in Islamic finance find it difficult to get jobs in the industry. Many complain that they cannot even find work attachments to get more on hand experience. True, economic cycles, immigration policies, the serious lack of standardization in the accreditation of Islamic finance courses, all conspire to contribute to the vagaries and sometimes perversities of the employment market. The Islamic finance sector in this respect is no exception. But some of the partners of INCEIF complain that the Centre has failed to deliver on student attachments at Islamic financial institutions as part of the Masters course, for instance.But then the market hears ad nauseam at the surfeit of conferences that the Islamic finance industry is growing between 20 percent to 40 percent per year. And yet, there seems to be mismatch between this perceived market growth and the reality of the job market in the sector, especially for young newcomers. In the formative years, much time, effort and resources were wasted because of a lack of clarity of the vision of INCEIF. The initial concentration on a distance learning institution was misguided only to be reversed later. Similarly, a postgraduate institution with little or no in-house independent research programs or capability similarly reflects the need for a rethink of the INCEIF model. Vicary has his task cut out. Some critics stress that INCEIF should forget about signing endless collaborations and MoUs with this and that institution. Instead it should concentrate on building its reputation and institutional capacity in quality teaching, tutorials, references, world-class research, a sustainable academic reputation and tie-ups with industry, the financial services sector and the real economy - a plan of action some of its Council members and academic staff, do recognize and privately aspire to. If it is also going to be a centre of excellence, then it will also have to re-examine its entry requirements and perhaps raise the bar a peg or two. The new INCEIF head has hinted at some of his priorities that lie ahead. "I am delighted to have the opportunity to build on the success of my predecessor Natt. In particular I will be looking to build on the CIFP program to ensure that it becomes the most relevant and premier Islamic Finance professional qualification in the world. Through close association and dialogue with the Global Islamic Finance industry, INCEIF and its sister organization ISRA (International Shariah Research Academy) will provide cutting edge research that provides benefit to industry practitioners," he explained following the announcement of his appointment. The importance of the human capital challenge for the Islamic finance industry cannot be over-stated. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) last September published a Working Paper titled “The Effects of the Global Crisis on Islamic and Conventional Banks: A Comparative Study” in which it warned that expertise in Islamic finance has not kept pace with the rapid growth of the industry. The human capital challenge is dire given that Islamic bankers need to be familiar with conventional finance and be versed on the different aspects of Shariah, particularly on the Islamic law of transactions.Such a requirement is becoming essential given the increasing degree of sophistication of Islamic financial products. But as the IMF paper points out, "professionals with this dual qualification are hard to find, although the number of newcomers in Islamic finance is steadily growing. Not surprisingly, the shortage of specialists also has an impact on product innovation, and could hinder the effective management of risks relevant to the industry, including the lack of instruments to hedge against the volatility in currency and commodity markets and the relatively higher liquidity, legal, and reputational risks."