Sponsored statement: FWU

 

FWU Group is a major independent financial services group focusing on innovative and customised product design in the field of unit-linked investments and family takaful-linked plans for international markets. It has significant experience in customised investment-linked business via banks and independent financial advisers in Europe, the Middle East and Far East.

FWU Group is a global leader in the fast-expanding takaful industry and has generated significant production in the various markets in which it has a presence – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Pakistan and Malaysia. Today, FWU Group is recognised as the largest global producer of bancatakaful in those five markets combined.

By entering into a long-term strategic partnership with a local takaful operator, and securing major bank distribution partners in each market, FWU Group has developed a unique business model.

It specialises in white-label family takaful investment-linked plans and offers the takaful operator a customised innovative product family, which includes savings, education, marriage and pension plans.  A second generation of that product suite has been introduced to meet with customers’ broader financial planning needs. The investment value proposition takes into account the various risk profiles specific to each customer segment. FWU Group offers the banks an open investment architecture where they can incorporate their own sharia-compliant funds into the investments universe, as well as a proprietary quantitative investment model for the monthly fund selection and allocation. FWU Group’s takaful partners offer two distinct investment strategies – equities and cash. The participant in the takaful fund is able to choose which strategy is best suited to their risk appetite.

FWU Group has recently introduced a unique investment programme in conjunction with an international bank. The dynamic principal-protected equity strategy – Dynamic Protection Plan – is an additional tool for the actively managed underlying equity portfolio of the FWU Group family takaful programmes. It has been designed to allow for participation in the upward trends of the equity markets while offering protection against bearish markets.

The group is valued for its product innovation, new systems development attuned to emerging market needs, speed of deal execution and significant depth and experience of its executive management team. In order to facilitate the customer sales process and policy administration, FWU Group has created a proprietary web portal that also provides automated underwriting capability. The FILOS portal provides bancatakaful partners with an internet-based point-of-sale and administration system designed to enhance product management, sales fulfilment and sales management. It also levels the playing field for consumer investment products by making the family takaful investment-linked plan as convenient as the sale of an Islamic mutual fund or an Islamic credit card.

FWU Group is raising the performance bar with innovative ways of responding to market conditions and by working closely with prominent sharia scholars, national regulators, international actuaries, global reinsurers and international accounting firms. FWU Group’s aim is to create a family takaful business not only for the worldwide Muslim community but also for non-Muslim consumers.

FWU Group is active in promoting the life takaful industry and has been invited to speak at several industry events, write for a wide range of magazines and edit publications on many aspects of Islamic finance, including takaful. FWU Group is regularly asked to contribute to articles on takaful and bancatakaful in the financial press, such as in the Middle East Insurance Review, Financier Worldwide and Islamic Finance News. FWU Group also regularly sponsors events on takaful to raise awareness in markets showing great promise for the implementation of bancatakaful – most recently Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia.

FWU Group is also an observer member of the Islamic Financial Services Board and an active member of its takaful working group. In recognition of its global expertise in takaful, FWU Group has won 11 prestigious awards, including from Euromoney, Islamic Finance News, Islamic Business and Finance and World Finance. More recently, FWU Group received accolades for Best BancaTakaful Operator from the Islamic Business & Finance Awards 2010 in December 2010, as well as Best Takaful Provider at the ceremony held in February 2011 during the Euromoney Islamic Finance Awards 2011. These events recognised the most successful Islamic institutions worldwide.

FWU group has its international hub located in the Dubai International Finance Centre (trading under the name FWU Dubai Services GmbH). This entity deals exclusively with FWU Group’s takaful business at the international level. It has also established its Far East regional service hub in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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