Depositors' withdrawal behavior in Islamic banking: case of Indonesia

Purpose – Islamic banks need to manage depositors' deposit withdrawals in a well manner in order to be able to optimize depositors' funds in their portfolio financing. Taking into account the Indonesian Islamic banking industry as a study case, this paper attempts to analyze the depositors' withdrawal behavior. Moreover, it also analyzes the responses of Islamic banks to mitigate such deposit withdrawals. Design/methodology/approach – First, the paper accommodates the flow of funds of the Indonesian Islamic banking operations. Second, it formulates a liability side model of the competitive Islamic banking industry referring to some ideas from the conventional models. Then, the paper uses linear probability model (LPM) to identify depositors' withdrawal behavior and to analyze the responses of Islamic banks to mitigate deposit withdrawals. Findings – It is found that depositors withdraw their money if: Islamic banks do not generate incomes from their financing; interest rate goes up; and total deposits tend to decrease. As such, Islamic banks have to anticipate this withdrawal behavior by doing two actions: reserving some liquidity and adjusting return sharing ratio to depositors. The output of this paper should benefit the policy markers and Islamic banks to understand depositors' behavior in withdrawing money and determine appropriate policies to manage it. Originality/value – The best of author's knowledge, this is the first paper trying to analyze the depositors' withdrawal behavior with LPM model taking into account the Indonesian Islamic banking industry.