Buletin Takaful

Source: The Edge Daily, 5th November 2007

ING Insurance Bhd is looking to make Malaysia its global Islamic insurance hub and has initiated talks with Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to produce and manage takaful products for distribution to other countries.

“We are very, very interested in takaful. We are pursuing certain opportunities that are available in the domestic market. We have spoken to BNM about how we can leverage on our global presence by being the hub for takaful,” ING Insurance president and chief executive officer Dr Nirmala Menon told The Edge Financial Daily.

She said countries ING Insurance was considering for the distribution of its takaful products included those in the Middle East, China and India which have significant Muslim populations.

“We believe that there is a market, and if we can have the expertise to manufacture those products, we can have them distributed,” she said.

She said having spoken to BNM, ING Insurance was now “assessing and digesting” the guidelines and necessary requirements for this initiative, adding the company was still in the early stages of its plans to enter the takaful market.

Although Nirmala could not confirm whether the company would acquire any Islamic financial institutions to strengthen its efforts into the takaful market, she said it “could be an approach”.

Meanwhile, going into 2008, she said the company was changing focus towards wealth management from being traditionally life insurance driven.

“We see that Malaysia still has a large proportion of people in the middle-age bracket who are now looking at savings and return on investment type plans. We will be focusing on investment and unit-linked type products where we bundle some protection with return on investment.

“With our equity market doing quite well, we think that this is a good time to leverage on the market trends and move into that,” she said.

ING Insurance would also continue driving its employee benefits, bancassurance and tied-agency businesses as engines of growth, Nirmala said.

On its bancassurance tie-ups with banks including Citibank Malaysia and RHB Bank Bhd, she said the company would strengthen and increase its contact points very soon.

“There are some very interesting things in the pipeline, and we will be making an announcement shortly,” she said.

She added that the company hoped its bancassurance arm would become a significant contributor to its earnings while its tied agents would remain the biggest part of its distribution strategy.

Additionally, a key focus next year was to recruit more agents for its current 9,000-strong agency force and to provide training to create a more professional agency force which understood the needs of customers, she said.

On the outlook for the local insurance industry in 2008, Nirmala said interest was growing in savings and wealth accumulation plans and insurance agents had a role to play in educating the public on the importance of purchasing insurance plans.