The family takaful industry will grow five folds to account for about a 10th of the overall life insurance sector within the next decade, as Islamic insurance attracts more non-Muslim demand, sharia insurer FWU said on Tuesday.
Family takaful now has a market share of about 2.5 percent of the overall life insurance industry, and this was expected to rise to as high as 10 percent over the next 10 years.
"The Muslim population is more than a billion now but I don't think that this is really the market," Manfred Dirrheimer, managing director of FWU Global Takaful Dubai, said on the sidelines of a conference in the Malaysian capital.
"There is a trend for these products but equally shared between Muslims and non-Muslims."
Dirrheimer said the target was reachable although some bankers have been less optimistic about the industry, citing the shortage of sharia-compliant instruments that insurers can invest in and doubts about whether takaful really complies with the sharia's guidelines.
Takaful premiums are expected to grow to around $8.8 billion globally by the end of 2010, compared with $3.4 billion in 2007, according to Ernst & Young.
Islamic insurance has struggled to take off in some Muslim countries. It has a penetration rate of 10.5 percent compared with 42.3 percent for conventional insurance in Malaysia, which has the world's largest Islamic bond market.
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