Takaful Investment Portfolios: A Study of the Composition of Takaful Funds in the GCC and Malaysia

Chapter 8

Conclusion and Recommendations

This chapter summarises the main findings of the study and presents concluding remarks. Moreover, the recommendations derived from the study are also presented on three levels, namely regulatory authorities, takaful operating companies, and Islamic banks/windows. The main results and the relevant recommendations should be considered within the historical context in which this study was conducted, namely the initial years of the emergence of takaful, 2002 to 2005. Finally, future research areas to develop this line of research are also highlighted at the end of this chapter.

MAIN FINDINGS OF THE STUDY

The findings that emerged from this study are presented in this section. However, the reader should take into consideration the limitations of this study, which are mentioned later in this chapter. The main findings concluded from the study can be summarised as follows:

1. The GCC takaful operating companies dominated the shareholders’ fund investment portfolio and accounted for almost 86% of total shareholders’ fund investment portfolio by the end of 2005. This dominance could be attributed to the larger average size of capital for GCC takaful operating companies and to the nature of asset classes comprising the shareholders’ fund investment portfolio.

2. The gap in the size of the general fund investment portfolio between the GCC and Malaysia gradually shrunk during the years of the study, to almost nil by the end of 2005. This was due to ...