The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) has launched for the first time country-level data from IFSB member jurisdictions on the financial soundness and growth of the takaful sector. The inaugural dissemination covers quarterly data for takaful indicators from the four quarters of 2019.
Regulators in six countries, namely, Brunei, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudia Arabia, Turkey and the UAE, have participated in leading this significant step forward in providing data on takaful and prudential and structural Islamic financial indicators (PSIFI). The IFSB plans to extend the coverage of the database on takaful indicators to include more member jurisdictions.
IFSB secretary-general Dr Bello Lawal Danbatta said the IFSB’s database project has now reached a new milestone, most notably, its expansion beyond the Islamic banking sector to cover data on the takaful and Islamic capital market sectors of IFSB member jurisdictions.
The sectoral country-level data provide a number of prudential indicators covering family and general takaful, including capital adequacy, asset quality, management soundness, earnings and profitability, liquidity, as well as retakaful and actuarial indicators. There are also some additional prudential indicators as well as a set of structural indicators that provides information on the overall size and other sector-level balance sheet aspects of the takaful sector.
The aim is to provide important information on the soundness and growth of the takaful industry and to address some of the critical data gaps in the takaful sector as the database continues to expand.
The IFSB secretariat has also been conducting capacity building workshops/meetings with the country representatives of the PSIFI Task Force, which now includes compilers from the new sectors, and focuses on enhancing the clarity and consistency of the compilation and reporting of indicators across jurisdictions. As such, it intends to enhance the quality, quantity and reliability of the data and information available through the PSIFI database, available on the IFSB website. M