Takaful growth trend intact

The Edge Daily: The takaful and retakaful industry continued to show rapid growth momentum and was increasingly recognised as one of the major components of the overall Islamic financial system, said Takaful Ikhlas Sdn Bhd president/CEO Syed Moheeb Syed Kamarulzaman.

He said the industry’s growth trend was intact but there was a need for mutual recognition of financial standards and products across jurisdictions.

“The progressive harmonisation of syariah, in this respect, needs to be viewed as a driver towards greater international financial integration,” he said, adding that this was part of the challenge for the industry going forward.

Such a convergence and harmonisation could only happen with greater engagement among the regulators, practitioners and scholars in Islamic finance and takaful in the international community, Syed Moheeb told participants of the recent 2008 Global Forum on Islamic Finance.

Syed Moheeb said global takaful contributions were expected to reach US$7 billion (RM23.45 billion) by 2015 from about US$2 billion in 2007.

In Malaysia, the total assets of the takaful funds in 2007 stood at RM8 billion, or 6.8% of the combined assets of the takaful and insurance industry. Net contributions jumped 47% year-on-year to RM2.5 billion, he said.