HR Becomes One Of The Challenges In The Development Of Sharia Life Insurance

Illustration. (Photo: Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Sharia-based life insurance company PT Prudential Sharia Life Assurance (Prudential Syariah) revealed that human resources (HR) are one of the challenges in developing sharia life insurance.

"Our human resources are still lacking, especially those who understand technical matters of sharia," said Prudential Syariah Chief Financial Officer Paul Setio Kartono at a Journalist Workshop in Bogor, West Java, quoted from Antara, Friday 17 February.

This is because the available Islamic financial education programs are not in accordance with the capabilities required by the industry.

Therefore, he said that HR competencies must be standardized in order to better understand the Syarish life insurance industry. As for Prudential Syariah, it continues to improve HR capabilities with various trainings.

Apart from that, another reason why human resources are still a challenge for sharia life insurance development is that the majority of human resources in the sharia life insurance industry come from non-sharia financial backgrounds. Insurance technical education also tends to come from western countries that are not familiar with Islamic insurance.

Another challenge that hinders the development of sharia life insurance, said Paul, is literacy. The literacy rate for sharia insurance in Indonesia is only 3.99 percent, much lower than the literacy rate for insurance in general.

Muslims still choose conventional life insurance for one reason or another compared to Islamic insurance.

Then, regulations and taxation are also a challenge, where there are still limited regulations and fatwas regarding the diversity of sharia insurance products.

According to him, one of the challenges to regulation and taxation is driven by the limited variety of sharia investment products at home and abroad, tax rules that are not yet clear on taxes on underwriting surplus and the Tabarru' Fund, as well as regulations regarding inheritance laws that do not yet exist.

"We support the Financial Services Authority (OJK) to add regulations in developing the sharia insurance industry in Indonesia," he said.

Finally, continued Paul, the supporting ecosystem is another challenge in the development of sharia life insurance, which includes data and information, technology, research, and development capacity.