Islamic Financial Services

With strong banking and financial services segments, combined with an expanding insurance sector and global demand for Islamic bonds, sharia-compliant finance in Qatar is expected to see continued growth in 2013. Indeed, the sharia-compliant segment has recently shown some of the best growth figures in a country where expansion is generally high. In particular, takaful (Islamic insurance) and re-takaful has proved increasingly important to the market, and selling through Islamic banks’ channels remains a significant distribution mechanism for insurance. While insurance penetration is low at present, Qatar’s Islamic insurance sector is expected to expand in the future. This chapter includes an analysis on sukuks, sharia-compliant bonds.