UAE Islamic insurance conference calls for industry action
More than 350 Islamic insurance leaders from around the world are in Dubai to discuss the changing face of the Islamic insurance industry.
The 12th edition of the World Takaful Conference (WTC) opened in Dubai on Tuesday with Islamic insurance leaders from around the world, urged to seek “more collaboration among regulators and standard setters to address the fragmentation of the takaful industry”.
Delivering the keynote address on the first day of the event Ebrahim Obaid Al Zaabi, director general, Insurance Authority (IA) UAE, emphasised the need for more collaboration among regulators,” according to various local reports.
“[The] Takaful sector has been reporting health growth in demand for types of Takaful products,” he said. “However, despite the specific laws that have been issued in many countries, we are still in a bad need of preparing Islamic financial systems that cope with the economic changes and overcome the challenges.”
This year’s conference is held under the theme of ‘Stability, Authenticity & Technological Transformation’ with the use of technology and innovation a major topic for discussion.
Salmaan Jaffery, chief business development officer at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Authority said that there is an appetite to do more in Islamic fintech. “Takaful Insurance is growing and is underpenetrated and being taken up by the younger generation who embrace new technology,” he said.
“Innovation in products without innovation in business models, artificial intelligence (AI), big data and algorithms — is sub-optimal.”
Jaffery called on the Islamic financial services industry to embrace the fintech revolution to give the industry a “badly-needed” technology transformation.
‘Technology disruptions’
“The technology disruptions associated with the so called fourth industrial revolution is being talked about much in the context of conventional financial services,” he said.
“Here is a huge opportunity for the Islamic financial services industry including takaful to embrace technology and digitisation to gain market share around the world. There is a need for the industry to reinvent itself in the context of technology disruptions,” Jaffery said.
Today’s second day of the conference is entitled ‘InsurTech Integrated’ and will focus on the impact of disruptive technologies on the insurance industry.
