BNM Met with Insurance and Takaful Leaders

BNM held a dialogue with leaders of the insurance and takaful industries today to discuss the developments in the economy and wide ranging issues facing the industries.

Among others, the insurers are ready for the implementation of RBC come 1 Jan 2009. The insurers and takaful operators will be more vigilant against fraudulent claims and potential fraud. BNM has also make available liquidity facility to insurance companies and takaful operators.

Source: BNM

Zurich Enters Takaful

Zurich Financial Services Group has entered into a joint venture with Abu Dhabi National Takaful Company (ADNT) to establish a new family takaful business called Zurich Takaful Company Limited.

The new company will be based in Dubai International Financial Centre and will be 51% owned by Zurich and 49% owned by ADNT.

Source: Gulf News

9MP - Takaful & Retakaful

The government targets GPD growth at 6% p.a. for 2008-2010. Growth in the financial and business services subsector is expected to be at 9.8% p.a. with islamic banking, takaful and re-takaful, shared services and outsourcing as the main contributors.

Source: The Edge Daily

Maybank to Establish International Takaful Holding Company

Maybank has signed an MoU with the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD) to jointly explore the feasibility of establishing an international takaful holding company. ICD is the commercial arm of the Islamic Development Bank.

The new holding company targets to commence operations by end of 2008.

Source: Bursa Malaysia

Takaful Annual Statistics 2007

The takaful industry saw a 3-fold increase in the agency force from 15,194 in 2006 to 43,843 in 2007. However, net contributions income only improved by 49%.

It is believed that the increase in the number of agents was caused by the new licensees such as Prudential BSN, HLTMT and MAA. Although the new licenses were granted in 2006, most of the new licensees only started business in 2007. Another new licensee HSBC Amanah Takaful does not have agency force but distributes mainly through HSBC bank.

It is interesting to note that the number of employees for the takaful industry only increased by 200-300 from year 2005, despite the entry of the 4 new players. This is because the new players mainly adopt shared resources model (sharing with their traditional insurance business) and this helped to improve efficiency as the management expense ratio for general takaful has decreased from 34.3% to 29.7%.

The per capita contributions on family and general takaful were still low at RM73.2 and RM20.8 respectively compared with the traditional counterparts of RM695 and RM369.

Is the Malaysia Takaful market growing too slowly? Our earlier article has highlighted the threat that MIFC may not achive its targets as GCC has already claimed to be the largest takaful market in the world.

By class of business, we saw investment-linked and motor takaful increase in share in new business in 2007. This may be a result of the new licensees' strategies. It is worth noting that the claims ratio for general takaful has deteriorated from 59.2% to 71.5%, mainly due to the poor performance of motor business.

Source: BNM