Catering to customer demand during the COVID-19 pandemic led a Pakistani Takaful operator to embrace technology services for its Shariah compliant investment-linked products.
Pak-Qatar Family Takaful CEO Waqas Ahmad shared with IFN Investor that while the firm was established in 2007 with him being among the founders, he left for other jurisdictions and rejoined them later – optimistic that he could replicate learnings from customer services elsewhere in his home country of Pakistan.
The main hurdle faced initially was the lack of viable distribution channels – until the firm was able to forge partnerships with banks and other aggregators. Once this distribution network was in place, the firm could focus on creating new products, explained Waqas.
Following that success, the firm decided decided to offer new innovative saving products that focused on savings and Takaful cover with up to 100% allocations.
The launch of the unit-linked Takaful plans helped because income through the administrative fees from the products contributed towards the Waqf pool, which covers the Takaful benefits and Participants Investment Account for saving / investment purpose, explained Waqas.
“We have seen an increase in our customer base by 20% to 25% in the current year. Our AuM (assets under management) for this product currently stands at over US$178 million.”
According to the State Bank of Pakistan’s statistics for the year ended the 31st December 2023, total investments by the life insurance industry, including the Family Takaful segment, rose 13.5% to PKR1.87 trillion (US$6.75 billion) while the non-life sector investments rose 23.5% to PKR144.1 billion (US$5.19 million).
