Jaiz Takaful Insurance plc has announced that it has fully commenced operations in Nigeria, assuring that claims settlement takes place only within seven working days, after all the necessary documents are filed.
Briefing journalists in Abuja on the operations of the company, Momodou Musa Joof, managing director, said Takaful Insurance had commenced in Kaduna, Kano and Lagos states, with head office in Abuja.
Takaful is a type of insurance system devised to comply with the Sharia laws, in which money is pooled and invested.
According to Joof, the insurance model has been structured in such a way that allows policyholders to benefit whether they suffer loss or not.
“Takaful is coming as a scheme for all and the good thing in Takaful is that, if you don’t suffer loss, your contribution become an automatic investment,” he said.
Joof explained that Takaful, a Sharia-compliant insurance practice is open to both Muslims and Christians, as well as, guarantees mutual benefits for all policy holders.
According Joof, “Some shy away from conventional insurance practice for religious reasons; some say it resembles gambling and the game of chance is not allowed in the religion of Christianity and Islam.
“When you walk into any conventional insurance company to insure a house, the first question you are asked is what is the value of the building and if you say about 100 million, they do their calculation and charge you 20,000 a year; that 20,000 you have paid them they are giving you a piece of paper called insurance,” he said
To him, “In the eyes of Islam so long as it remains buying and selling, you pay 20,000 in exchange for a piece of paper called insurance it is not equal. What have I really bought if you ask yourself, a promise, that if I suffer any loss I would be paid but what if I do not suffer a loss, that question is not answered. So, people will say that insurance company takes your money and you get nothing back
“Now you insure that house and it is on fire in a particular year and you go back to them and if they pay you that 100million they would have been paying you far more than you gave them, so that it becomes a question of you may or may not suffer a loss, very close to gambling. You may suffer a loss they lose by paying you money, you may not suffer a loss, you lose your money by not benefiting.
“And I can assure you that by the time you insure that house and you go to the church or mosque and pray that oh God help me that this house is not on fire, I love my house, by the time you made that prayer and your prayer is answered it means that you are not ready to appreciate the benefits of your insurance policy.
“It all means that I prefer not to know their benefits so that the only benefit they have to offer is to settle your claim or losses.
“But with the Takaful concept we are coming to say look, it is not fair that way, that money you collected from 5million people belongs to them forever. But because we have to pay to go and collect, we have to invest it, we have to settle claims for them, then that means that service we are rendering to them must be paid for.
“So it is in that application that we said that whatever comes in we are taking 30%. So if we now underwrite vigorously and through the support of the media and everybody gets to know about our presence and we generate 500billion, 30% of that becomes far more than the salary that we need and the other part of 70%, the regulator makes sure that we have two separate accounts, the account of management which belongs to us and the account of participants.
“So that participants account we only use it to pay claims, to pay reinsurance or paid commissions to intermediaries such as brokers and agents, whatever remains of that account must be distributed out to participants who have not suffered losses.”
Joof further noted that, Takaful had expanded to many parts of the world, including countries with Christian majority, such as Zambia, with the United Kingdom now hosting annual meetings on it.
Onyinye Nwachukwu, Abuja
