Effect of COVID‐19 on the performance of Islamic and conventional GCC banks

AbstractThis paper investigates the effects of the COVID‐19 crisis on the performance of 49 listed banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, during the period from the first quarter of 2017 through the third quarter of 2020. The findings reveal that GCC banks were negatively affected by the pandemic. However, Islamic banks have performed better than conventional banks. The results also show that the banks in Saudi Arabia and UAE were affected more than the banks in other GCC countries. We also show that Islamic banks which are government‐linked, those that are large and those with high loan ratios were more affected by the pandemic. Overall, we argue that Islamic banks can play a significant role in the recovery of GCC countries from the consequences of the pandemic.