The 81-Point Shariah Compliance Checklist Every Islamic Finance Team Should Be Using
The Islamic finance industry reached $5.2 trillion in global assets in 2025, posting 14.9% year-over-year growth, and is projected to exceed $9.7 trillion by 2029. This remarkable expansion, with Islamic banking financing growing at 17% annually, reflects not just scale, but a fundamental shift toward ethical, Shariah-compliant financial infrastructure. Yet this growth amplifies a critical imperative: robust Shariah compliance frameworks that lay the foundation upon which the industry's credibility, investor confidence, and long-term sustainability depend.
Yet the reality for many Islamic finance institutions tells a different story. A product rejection from a Shariah Supervisory Board doesn't just delay a launch. It costs six months of rework, a demoralized product team, and a competitor who got to market first. In an industry where 40-60% of SSB review time is spent searching for precedents rather than evaluating structures, the lack of structured preparation before engaging Shariah expertise remains a persistent bottleneck.
ZeroH developed the Islamic Finance Compliance Checklist to address that gap: an 81-point, AAOIFI- and IFSB-aligned tool that is free, interactive, and requires no sign-up. Recently launched as part of ZeroH’s mission to strengthen the link between traditional Shariah scholarship and modern compliance infrastructure, it is designed for compliance officers, Shariah advisors, internal auditors, and risk managers who want to identify structural gaps early—before they become months of rework.
Why a Checklist Matters More Than Most Teams Think
Islamic finance compliance spans across Shariah governance, contract law, regulatory alignment, audit documentation, and increasingly, ESG integration. The challenge most institutions face is that no one has mapped them into a single, actionable workflow.
Consider what typically happens when an Islamic bank develops a new Murabaha structure. The product team designs it. Legal drafts the contracts. Compliance checks it against internal policies. Then the SSB reviews it and identifies a structural issue that should have been caught at the design stage.
The cost of fixing a compliance issue late in the product cycle is materially higher than addressing it at the design stage, and the delay impact can be just as severe. In regulated financial environments, late-stage remediation routinely drives rework, governance friction, and product launch delays.
Therefore, a structured checklist doesn't replace scholarly judgment. It ensures that when scholars do engage, their time is spent on genuinely complex questions of fiqh al-muamalat (Islamic commercial jurisprudence) rather than flagging basic governance gaps that should never have reached their desk.
What the ZeroH Checklist Covers
The ZeroH checklist organizes 81 items across five pillars, each reflecting a distinct area of Shariah compliance that institutions must address.
Shariah Governance Framework (19 Items)
The first pillar covers 19 items spanning SSB composition and independence, fatwa management and register maintenance, internal Shariah review functions, and Zakat (the obligatory alms payable under Islamic law) calculation and purification processes. They're drawn directly from AAOIFI Governance Standard 1 and IFSB-10, and they represent the baseline that regulators from Qatar to Malaysia expect to see documented.
Product Shariah Compliance (25 Items)
This is the largest section at 25 items, covering contract documentation and SSB approval, screening for prohibited elements such as riba, gharar, and maysir, asset-backing verification, profit and loss sharing mechanics, and Sukuk structuring requirements. This is where most rejections happen and where the ZeroH checklist delivers the most immediate value. Walking through these items before submitting to an SSB can surface the exact issues that typically trigger a six-month rework cycle.
Regulatory and Operational Compliance (15 Items)
This pillar addresses 15 items, including alignment with AAOIFI and IFSB standards, jurisdiction-specific requirements for regulators like SAMA, BNM, CBUAE, and QCB, and AML/KYC procedures that meet both Shariah and secular regulatory standards. Islamic finance doesn't operate in a regulatory vacuum, and compliance teams need to manage both frameworks simultaneously.
Audit Readiness (14 Items)
This section covers 14 items focused on ensuring institutions can demonstrate compliance, not just claim it. This includes annual Shariah audit planning, documentation standards, marketing material review, and the evidence chain that auditors and regulators will request. In practice, the gap between being compliant and being able to prove compliance is where most institutions stumble during regulatory examinations.
ESG and Sustainability Integration (8 Items)
Finally, this pillar covers 8 items reflecting the growing convergence between Islamic finance principles and environmental, social, and governance standards. The alignment between Maqasid al-Shariah and the UN Sustainable Development Goals is increasingly recognized by multilateral development banks and institutional investors, and compliance frameworks need to reflect that reality.
How Institutions Can Use It
The ZeroH checklist is interactive. Teams can check off items as they complete them and track compliance scores in real time. A score above 90% indicates a strong compliance posture. Between 70-89% is adequate, but worth addressing the gaps. Below 50% signals a significant risk that needs immediate attention.
The tool is available at https://zeroh.io/resources/islamic-finance-compliance-checklist and can also be downloaded as a PDF, free, no sign-up, no email gate. Teams can print it, share it internally, and use it in SSB preparation meetings. The value of the checklist is in its use, not in a lead generation form.
The Bigger Picture
ZeroH built this checklist because we see compliance as a competitive advantage rather than a bottleneck. The institutions that treat Shariah compliance as a structured, continuous process are the ones launching products faster, with fewer rejections, and with audit trails that speak for themselves.
As the Islamic finance industry races toward $9.7 trillion by 2029, the institutions that will capture that growth are those that have mastered the discipline of structured compliance. With Islamic banking finance growing at 17% annually and regulators across the GCC and Southeast Asia implementing sophisticated governance frameworks, compliance excellence has become the competitive differentiator. ZeroH's commitment is to make that discipline accessible to every Islamic finance institution, regardless of size or resources.
The checklist is a practical starting point. It is designed to help teams identify gaps earlier, prepare better for Shariah review, and build the internal discipline required for sustainable growth.
Access ZeroH's Islamic Finance Compliance Checklist. Free to use, interactive, and with no sign-up required. Because the cost of getting Shariah compliance wrong is not only financial, it is reputational. And in Islamic finance, reputation is foundational.
