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financial structure of insurers. In practice, the Insurance Supervision Board of the Ministry
principally focuses on on-site supervision of insurers and intermediaries as well as other legal
entities and individuals operating in the sector. Besides, Ministry of Commerce is responsible
for approval for establishment of company and cooperative status. For different insurance
policies, there are also certain insurance pools and/or offices in Turkey that regulate the
industry.
Besides, all the other sector partners are also common for both conventional and Islamic
insurance. The given Takaful sector partners in are the same for conventional
insurance.
The agents, brokers and banks play a significant role as distribution channel actors for both
conventional and Takaful insurance. It can be criticized that when the country level insurance
pools are considered, the premium sources are not differentiated in the pools whether it is
Takaful or not. Even insurance sector employees are required to have specific licenses for Non-
Life/General and Life/Family insurance in Turkey regardless of whether conventional or Islamic
insurance. In addition, the issuers hold the compulsory training for insurance sector employees
including Takaful. Furthermore, NGOs are also common in Turkey, which means that perhaps
soon the Takaful industry is expected to be differentiated at some points from the sector with
its own union as understood from the country-level strategies.
TABLE 15: TAKAFUL SECTOR PARTNERS
Government
(Regulator/
Supervisor)
Companies Intermediaries
Insurance
Pools Offices Training NGOs
General
Directorate
of Insurance
39 Non-life 15.590 Agents
DASK
(Natural
Disaster
Insurance
Institution)
MVB
(Motor
Vehicles
Bureau)
ITC
(Insurance
Training
Center)
IAT
(Insurance
Association
of Turkey)
Insurance
Supervision
Board
23 Life 140 Brokers
TARSIM
(Agricultural
Insurance Pool)
PMC
(Pension
Monitoring
Center)
TIIW
(Turkish
Insurance
Institute
Waqf)
TOBB
(The Union of
Chambers
and
Commodity
Exchanges
of Turkey)
Capital
Market Board
2 General
Takaful + 5
windows
10.392 Bank
Branches
ORYM
(Extraordinary
Risk
Management
Center)
IIMC
(Insurance
Information
and
Monitoring
Center)
TÜSAF
(Insurance
Agents
Federation)
Social
Security
Institution
2 Family
Takaful + 3
windows
Receivables
Insurance
(Hermes) IAC
(Insurance
Arbitration
Commission)
Insurance
Experts
Foundation
Actuary
Foundation
Assurance
Account 3
Reinsurance
Risk Insurance
Takasbank
(Clearing)
Green Card
Health
Source: Authors’ own