All Countries and All Sectors

While in the middle of the 20th century the Kuwaiti aviation sector led the Gulf region in terms of progress and innovation, over the past 20 year or so the country has lost its lead as other GCC states have caught up. In the 1980s, Kuwait Airways was a favourite with an excellent reputation, but today it has largely been eclipsed by the rise...

The insurance sector in Kuwait has grown considerably over the past five years. According to statistics published by Capital Standards, a local ratings agency, in 2012 the industry brought in KD249.41m ($876.95m) in gross written premiums (GWPs), up more than 10% from the previous year.

In late April 2013 Kuwait’s government introduced new legislation aimed at providing Kuwaiti citizens with insurance against unemployment. The Unemployment Insurance Law (UIL) provides six months of coverage for nationals that have recently lost their jobs. This is the newest addition to the country’s extensive existing social safety net,...

Since the 2007-08 international economic downturn, revenue diversification has been a major focus for financial institutions around the world. In Kuwait, where a handful of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) were forced to enter into restructuring in the wake of the financial crisis and most others saw a major drop in income, this has taken...

As a major regional centre for Islamic banking and other sharia-compliant financial services, Kuwait is widely expected to take a leading role in the rapidly expanding sukuk (Islamic bond) market in the coming years. In the early and mid-2000s both sukuk and conventional bonds were considered to be a major source of funding, both for...

Kuwait has become a major global centre for a wide variety of activities in the Islamic financial services (IFS) sector in recent years. By the end of the first half of 2013, the country housed more than $70bn in sharia-compliant banking assets, which was equal at the time to 6% of total global Islamic banking assets, according to data from...