ABSTRACT
The new age Fintech-driven innovative financial services started with the fourth industrial revolution and COVID-19 has stimulated supreme innovation in the global financial services industry. It is the young and millennial population driving these innovations and startups are responding, as there are more than 15, 000 startups and global Fintech-based transaction crossed $6.308 Billion by the year 2020. Islamic finance industry has experienced an unprecedented growth, partly due to incremental investment in Fintech-based financial intermediation. Two most commonly cited high growth areas for Islamic finance lie within blockchain and crowdfunding. This study provides an advanced overview of the Islamic Fintech, blockchain and crowdfunding;their current landscape;and path forward. We discuss opportunities for Islamic financial institutions and a clear roadmap to capitalize on those opportunities. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
ABSTRACT
Purpose This paper examines the effect of lockdown on a firm's financial performance. The authors aim to fill in the debate over the corporate world's repercussions from governments' COVID-19 response. Therefore, it is imperative to understand what effect the lockdown policy has on firm financial performance. Design/methodology/approach The study data are cross-sectional, covering a sample of 246 listed firms in Indonesia. The lockdown policy and period data were retrieved from the Indonesian Ministry of Health COVID-19 special task force website. The authors' empirical model for performance specification is based on annual data, following a common performance function in economics and finance literature. In addition to controlling for the standard error and province effect, the authors also controlled the COVID-19 cases and the province effect. Findings The lockdown deteriorates the firm's profitability, but it is not up to making the firms at financial distress level. Simply put, lockdown erodes the profitability significantly, leading to declining performance;however, it does not mean the firms generate default. Research limitations/implications Several shortcomings in the authors' empirical setup need to be tackled for future research. For example, the study findings may limit the short-run effect but not the long-run effect (5-10 years after the pandemic). The findings also do not give room to justify that lockdown should not be imposed due to its deteriorating effect on the corporate world. Therefore, the authors leave this as a scope for future research. Originality/value This research is among the pioneer papers evaluating the effect of the government policy for mitigating the repercussions of COVID-19, and it reveals how this policy affects corporations.