This study discusses the empirical literature on the corporate governance and risk of conventional banks (CBs) and Islamic banks (IBs) in terms of board oversight focussing on the board of directors (BOD) characteristics and the board committees. The motivation of this review is to provide an understanding on the current state of literature in regards to how governance affect risk. The review suggests that the effects of corporate governance on risk are generally mixed. Overall, the relationship between board oversight and risk is in alignment with agency theory. This suggests that the boards are exerting their influence and oversight function on the risk management of the banks. This study finds that the literatures focus more on CBs and that research which compares the two banks type is still lacking. Additionally, studies examining IBs are mostly done with banks from specific countries or regions which might suggest that the risk profiles are region or country specific. Moreover, this review identifies the current research gap especially those that compare the corporate governance of both types of banks. The review contributes to an understanding of the importance of good governance on the management of risk and provide insights for researchers and policy makers.

This study aims to investigate income group changes within the B40 and factors contributing to a higher income group, after utilizing microcredit from Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM). The study was conducted in the North of Peninsular Malaysia involving the states of Perlis, Kedah and Pulau Pinang. The data was collected from 380 women micro-entrepreneurs who received AIM microcredit. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to analyse the significant differences in the income changes. Meanwhile, ordinal logistic regression was applied to estimate the factors that contribute to the higher income group among the AIM women micro-entrepreneurs. The findings indicate that AIM women micro-entrepreneurs within the B40 subgroups had significantly increased their income, hence, moving them up to the higher income group. The results also indicate that education, amount of loan borrowed, business experience and business management are significant factors that influence the women microentrepreneurs likelihood to be in the higher income group. This study made a profound contribution as it demonstrated clearly the success of microcredit in elevating the income of the B40 group across different income group levels prior to receiving the loan. Therefore, this study suggests that outreach of microcredit programmes should be further extended to the B40 group.