The Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has approved a draft of Takaful Rules, which will be published officially to elicit public opinion and will also be available on the Commission’s website.
According to a statement issued by the SECP here on Thursday, it hoped that after the promulgation of the new rules, the number of takaful service providers in the country will be increased substantially as all life and non-life insurance companies will also be allowed to offer takaful products.
Pakistan, bidding to nearly double Islamic banking in the South Asian state by 2015, is focusing on poor, conservative villages to drive growth and has ordered Islamic lenders to open 20 percent of all new branches in rural areas.
Islamic banking will help draw the funds of rural customers, a less sophisticated client base who also traditionally shun conventional banks due to concerns over interest which is forbidden under Islam, said Saleem Ullah, director of the Islamic banking department at the State Bank
Global Takaful contributions are expected to reach US$12bn by the end of the year, according to analysis by Ernst & Young.
Their research suggests that the global Takaful market could reach US$25bn by the end of 2015 compared to US$9.15bn in 2010.
Before the game-changing collapse of 2008 it was all a matter of Islamic banks beefing up their assets, reporting chunky profits and paying their shareholders fat dividends.
The headlines proclaiming record profits year after year were staple fare, and it's true that in the heady pre-crisis days double-digit profit increases were the norm as opposed to the exception to the rule.
AlHuda Centre of Islamic Banking & Economics (CIBE) and AKHUWAT are organizing International Conference on Islamic Microfinance on June 13, 2011 at Faisal Auditorium Islamabad wherein delegates from 12 countries will grace the occasion and 800 participants will attend this mega event. The aim of this conference is to choke out the plan of poverty alleviation on national and international scale to lessen poverty, social welfare and to tackle other problems pertaining to it.
The talk is big, but are potential sukuk originators walking the walk? Depending on who you speak to, the picture is mixed, marked on the other hand by the “irrational” exuberance and ambition of potential issuers, many of whom do not get near to an offering, and on the other hand those who are skeptical and indifferent based on an erroneous belief that sukuk origination is always more expensive than conventional bonds and is further complicated by the Shariah compliance requirement.
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