FWU Group is a leading independent financial services group, founded in 1989, focusing on innovative and customised product design in the field of unit-linked investments and family takaful investment-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 its system and services have contributed to production in its various markets of operation, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Malaysia and the UAE. The group has its international hub in the Dubai International Finance Centre, dealing exclusively with takaful service provision at international level. FWU Group has also established a Far East service hub in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Innovative Product Design
FWU Group specialises in white-label family takaful investment-linked plans, and jointly develops with its local licensed takaful partners an innovative product family, including savings, education, marriage and pension plans.

Product innovation includes a unique investment programme (in both equities and cash to suit each participant’s risk appetite) prepared in conjunction with and managed by a leading international bank. The dynamic principal-protected equity strategy is an additional tool for the actively managed underlying equity portfolio of the 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.

Furthermore, bank distribution partners are offered 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.

Unique Product Management
FWU Group is valued for its product innovation, as well as for its 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, the group has created a proprietary web portal that also provides its bancatakaful partners with automated underwriting capability. The 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 sale of a family takaful investment-linked plan as convenient as the sale of an Islamic mutual fund or an Islamic credit card.

Industry recognition
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.

The group is active in promoting the life takaful industry, and its members have repeatedly been invited to speak at major industry events, write for a wide range of magazines (including the Middle East Insurance Review, Financier Worldwide and Islamic Finance News) and edit publications on many aspects of Islamic finance, including takaful.

The FWU Group also regularly sponsors events on takaful to raise awareness in markets showing promise for the implementation of bancatakaful – most recently in Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia.

In recognition of its global expertise in takaful, FWU Group has won several prestigious awards, including from Euromoney, Islamic Finance News, Islamic Business and Finance and World Finance. Finally, FWU is an observer member of the Islamic Financial Services Board and an active member of its takaful working group.

Sohail Jaffer – Partner and Head of International Business Development, FWU International

For more information Tel: +352 26 197 709; S.Jaffer@fwugroup.com; www.fwugroup.com