A Sound Investment for Employees and Their Employers: Retirement Planning, Reinvented

Offering competitive health and wellness benefit programs is ever challenging for companies, as industry leaders continually devise ways to innovate and deliver high-value programs to attract and retain employees. Financial stability is a form of wellness, and yet companies offer limited finance-related benefit offerings. Employees are commonly given access to retirement savings plans and college savings plans, and yet employers do not typically incorporate educational components into benefit programs. Research presented in this paper examines the financial issues impacting the lives of young workers in the United States and makes the case for a new recruitment and retention tool: a dynamic, practical benefit program designed to engage employees in their financial planning early and empower them to make informed decisions.

Secularism, Sharia, and the Turkish Financial Markets

The financial markets in Turkey provide a laboratory to help resolve these competing views. Islamic law or Sharia contains a number of proscriptions that directly affect financial practices. The payment and receipt of interest is prohibited; so are most kinds of commercial insurance. These interpretations provided the impetus in the Islamic world for the creation of a class of banks that sought to offer Sharia compliant services. The first Islamic Banks in Turkey began operations in the 1980s. Their entry was initially tepid, in no small part because of secularist principles. Islamic financial institutions could not overtly advertise their religious orientation. The country had no “Islamic” banks, only finance houses. They were not Sharia compliant but “interest-free.” Moreover, the government left them in an uncertain regulatory status and subjected them to restrictions on growth. In this environment, the Islamic banks remained a peripheral part of the financial system. With the election of the AKP in 2002, however, the environment for Islamic banks in Turkey changed. Limitations on branch networks and capital raising were lifted. The government removed restrictions on the issuance of Sharia compliant bonds. Officials from the Islamic banks were appointed to the highest levels of government. This Article does several things. First, it examines principles of Islam that affect banking practices, with a particular emphasis on deposit insurance and credit cards. Second, the Article discusses the emergence of secularism in Turkey and the introduction of Islamic banks into the Turkish financial markets. The Article then examine their evolution, with particular emphasis on the changes implemented by the AKP. Finally, the Article examines the impact of these reforms, and what that impact says about Islamic influence in Turkey.