Can Turkey Implement Malaysian Takaful Know-How into Turkish Market?: A Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

The concept of takaful has been introduced after long-continued discussions made by the Islamic scholars. Even though takaful practices have around forty years of history globally, takaful operations are a comparatively new and underdeveloped sector in the Turkish insurance market. Given its dominant Muslim population, well-developed financial system, and the fact that takaful contributions have grown exponentially which is supported by current statistics, Turkey has great potential in prospering its takaful market. Thus, Turkey should develop further policies to develop its own takaful operators. In achieving so, Malaysia, which is considered to be one of the most advanced takaful ecosystems in the world, has been regarded as an example for comparison to probe into its takaful sector and evaluate the opinions of the Malaysian professionals towards the development of the takaful system in Turkey. In this paper, a phenomenological perspective has been used, assuming takaful as the phenomenon. This phenomenon was investigated by examining the experiences of five business professionals and four Shariah scholars through semi-structured interviews. With this technique, it is also aimed to obtain some valuable suggestions for the Turkish takaful industry. It is found that Turkey should firstly develop its regulatory and Shariah governance system and then take gradual steps to regulate to market. In addition, increasing awareness, developing qualified human capital, adapting technology for marketing, and standardising the market practices will help the development of the takaful market in Turkey.