History and Development of Takaful Research: A Bibliometric Review

Abstract

This paper explored a trend analysis related to takaful research from 1989 until March 2022. This research aims to determine: (1) the current growth and trends of publications in takaful; (2) the most productive contributors in takaful studies; (3) the highly-cited documents in takaful research; and (4) the essential keywords and themes involved in the takaful studies. The data was obtained through the Scopus database with the keywords “takaful,”“Islamic insurance,” or “sharia insurance.” The search resulted in 423 documents and became 356 documents after screening. The data has been exported and analyzed using tools such as Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, Publish or Perish (PoP) and Microsoft Excel. The results showed that most publications were in 2017 and 2020. The most significant contributor that published the most research documents were Syed Ahmad Salman by the author (21 publications), International Islamic University Malaysia by Institution (24,4%), English by language (97,5%), Malaysia by country (64,04%), Journal of Islamic Accounting and Business Research by title (22 publications). This study found the article “the cost efficiency of takaful insurance companies” written by Kader as the most cited publication. Moreover, based on the results of network visualization mapping, takaful research was divided into four main themes: risk management in the takaful industry and its relation with Islamic banks, efficiency in the takaful industry, and behavior of takaful customers, and development of takaful. This study recommended a systematic literature review on popular topics such as efficiency and family takaful for further studies.