Browsing by Author "Marhanum Che Mohd Salleh, Ph.D"

Family Takaful is a Shari’ah compliant insurance alternative that offers investment options to Takaful participants. Family Takaful investment-linked products provide a means of investment with proper financial protection. However, based on market observation, the penetration rate of Family Takaful remains small compared to that of conventional life insurance. According to the Malaysian Takaful Dynamic, the current penetration rate for Family Takaful was 14.5 per cent, while that of conventional life insurance was 41.2 per cent. Lack of awareness among the investors has limited the potential for unit-linked products with an emphasis on the investment link products in the Takaful industry. This research focuses on the investment aspect of Family Takaful known as investment-link Takaful by developing an investment preference model. Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour (TIB) are used to develop the conceptual framework. This study uses a quantitative research method. A questionnaire survey is used to collect primary data from 323 Family Takaful plan holders. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) results validate the conceptual model. The findings reveal that perceived risk has a negative impact on attitudes toward the investment-linked plan and awareness has a positive impact. Attitude has a positive impact on preference towards Family Takaful investment- linked plan. Attitude is also found to play a mediating role between religiosity, awareness and preference. The results provided by the study contribute to the existing literature and benefit Takaful operators in understanding the significant factors that affect investor preference in investment-link Family Takaful plans. Keywords: Takaful, Investment-linked plan, Malaysia, Shari’ah

House is the most important basic need for the human survival, however many people especially those who are categorised in the category of generation Y do not acquire a house due to various factors (internal salient belief factors, personal factor, and extra factor). In accordance, the volume of residential transaction and homeownership rate among youths in Malaysia has been decreasing for the past few years. It is proven as the number of residential property transaction has dropped from 272,669 transactions in 2012 to 243,190 transactions in 2022 to 108,955 transactions in quarter 3 2023. Thus, it is important to examine the behavior of generation Y towards house acquisition in Malaysia. This study focuses on Muslim Generation Y in West Malaysia, specifically on those who have purchased a home and those who have not. The research proposes to examine the internal salient belief factors (attitude and perceived religiosity on property), personal factors (lifestyles) as well as external factors (house features, house location, house price, house financing, and government support) in influencing house acquisition behavior among Muslim Generation Y. As such, this study integrates two theoretical approaches which are Attitude-Behavior-Context (ABC) theory and adoption of Islamic consumer behavior theory. The research framework consists of 13 hypotheses that predict eight direct relationship and five moderation effects. The data was collected using online survey and physical survey, 387 valid data was involved in testing the research model. SPSS 27 was used for data analysis. For direct testing, the empirical results of this study have revealed that attitude, lifestyles, location, and financial factors (house price and financing factors) influence house acquisition behavior significantly while perceived religiosity on property, house feature and government support did not. The findings also revealed that all moderation effects of house feature, location, government support and financial factors (house price and financing factors) through attitude influence house acquisition behavior significantly. The study findings are believed to contribute significantly to the theory, methodology, and empirical practice. More importantly, these insights will help industry players to strengthen and create sustainable marketing strategies to attract more Muslim Generation Y to acquire a house.

The ageing population has become a crucial concern around the world. Based on the Department of Statistics Malaysia (2020), Malaysia is experiencing a sharp growth in the ageing population- leading to an ageing nation. The public pension scheme is notably inadequate due to its low replacement ratio, while employees provident fund (EPF) exhibits lower savings of participants. This research aims to propose an Islamic health protection retirement plan (i-HPRP) for Malaysian employees, followed by exploring retirees' experiences, investigating the influential factors to the suggested model's preferences, and the moderating effect of age on the hypotheses' relationship. This research has applied sequential mixed methodology consist of qualitative and quantitative; thematic analysis was applied for qualitative, structural equation modelling for quantitative analysis. A total of 28 interviewees for semi-structured interviews, six participants in focus group discussion and 498 survey data were used in this research. The findings from qualitative analysis exhibited that most retirees were not prepared for retirement. The proposed i-HPRP was supported by the takaful practitioners understudy, especially on the fund contribution from two sources: employee and employer. A total of six independent variables from life-cycle theory and social exchange theory were adopted to investigate the relationships with the preferences towards i-HPRP model. The quantitative findings showed the significant role of saving behaviour, future planning and commitment to the preferences towards i-HPRP. In contrast, perceived benefit, spending behaviour did not exhibit a significant effect and trust showed a significant negative relationship. Meanwhile, age significantly moderated the relationship between savings, perceived benefit, future planning, commitment, and preferences towards i-HPRP. The findings of this research would be significant for takaful operators and related government agencies to design an innovative health retirement plan that may assist future retires regarding future financial preparation and protection.

COVID-19 has been declared as a pandemic by World Health Organization since the year 2020 and has become a global issue in health and the economy sectors. The pandemic has affected millions of people worldwide by reducing health rates and financial well-being. This has also lead to mental health problems. This research aims to observe and compare the COVID-19 coverages offered by family and general takaful operators in Malaysia. This research adopts qualitative approach where data is collected via takaful operators’ website. Overall, six operators have involved in this research comprises of three (3) general and three (3) family operators. Documentation and comparative analysis is conducted to observe COVID-19 coverages offered by the operators. The analysis found that various coverage of COVID-19 has been offered by both family takaful operators and general takaful operators. The family takaful operator that has provided the highest number of COVID-19 coverage was Prudential BSN Takaful Berhad (7 coverages), followed by Sun Life Malaysia Takaful Berhad (6 coverages). Meanwhile, the general takaful operator that have offered more initiatives to help COVID-19 victim was Etiqa General Takaful Berhad in TripCare 360 Takaful (6 coverages), followed by Zurich General Takaful Malaysia Berhad in Z-CoVac Protect Takaful (2 coverages). The coverages varied from COVID-19 diagnosis test, hospitalization until COVID-19 vaccination side effects. Overall, findings from this research reveal that each operator have offered around the same coverage of COVID-19 and they have put effort into giving the best COVID-19 coverage for their customers. The coverages are varied depending on the amount of funds allocated by the operators. Findings from this research is significance to the academic literature as well as industry players on their effort to provide the best coverage or protection against the pandemic for future sustainability.