Performance of Islamic Mutual Funds: A Comparison with Conventional Mutual Funds

Abstract

slamic finance industry has been expanded in the last decade and has branched out itself from banking to other financial sectors like Islamic Assets Management and Islamic Insurance Companies. Islamic finance industry growth over the past decade is impressive comparative to conventional sector particularly at the time of financial crisis. The focus of this research study is to assess the performance of Islamic and Conventional mutual funds in Pakistan for the period of 7 years ranging from 2007 to 2013. The research also studied the impact of NAV on mutual funds and how the volatility influences the Islamic and Conventional mutual funds. This research is based on the sample of equity funds using all Asset Management Companies in Pakistan on the basis of availability of each fund‘s NAV. The findings suggest that mutual funds performance led to mixed trend. The results indicates that portfolio returns of Islamic funds are more clustered around mean that shows the level of consistency in the performance of the Islamic funds, whereas portfolio returns of the Conventional funds are more volatile and inconsistent comparatively. Concerning overall performance, Islamic funds performed better than Conventional funds.