Islamic insurance on the rise

Chakib Abouzaid does not like playing the part of the outcast. Nor does he want his burgeoning business of takaful, or Islamic insurance, to be marginalised as something separate from the large global insurance providers that now dominate the scene.

“Takaful is not a ghetto and I don’t like to work in a ghetto,” says Mr Abouzaid, the chief executive of Takaful Re in Dubai, the first takaful reinsurer of its size in the world. “Takaful companies are mature companies. We are also part of the insurance industry and I think we are contributing to the development of the insurance industry.”

In many ways he is right. According to a report last October from Swiss Re, the world’s second-largest reinsurer, the takaful sector grew at an annual average of 25 per cent between 2004 and 2007, adjusted for inflation. The rest of the insurance industry grew at slightly more than 10 per cent a year in that period.