South Africa's Absa Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Absa Group, has acquired Takafol South Africa, the country's only Takaful provider.
The new division will operate as Absa Takaful. Without breaking down numbers for its conventional and Islamic customer base Edwyn O'Neill, AIC's managing executive, told The Islamic Globe that Absa Group currently services approximately 12.3m customers.
He said that AT's primary challenge is to reach as many people as quickly as possible to build on Takafol SA's customer book, which stands at over 4,000.
O'Neill said the current book value for short-term insurance is approximately R50m ($6.9m) of premiums. Positioned alongside Absa Islamic Bank, AT will leverage on the Group's distribution network and will expect new head, current MD of Takafol SA, Uwaiz Jassat, to hit the ground running.
AIC and Takafol SA's relationship goes back to 2008 when the former started underwriting the latter's business. The Barclays majority-owned Absa Group will now be able to control all underwriting, pricing, and management of the Takaful business.
In a statement O'Neill, Jassat, and Absa Islamic Bank's MD, Amman Muhammad, separately emphasized that while Absa Islamic strengthens its domestic business the pot of gold lies beyond the Rainbow Nation, with the much larger Muslim population on the continent.
Its Tanzanian subsidiary National Bank of Commerce launched Islamic banking in May last year and the Group has a presence in Nigeria, Namibia and Mozambique.
© The Islamic Globe 2011
