Keywords
insurance regulation
NIIRA 2025
Islamic finance
Nigeria
Abstract
The provisions of the Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Act 2025 were critically reviewed in this research work, and their implications for the regulation, growth, and sustainability of Takaful operations in Nigeria were evaluated. The ambiguity in the regulations governing Islamic insurance and the need to assess whether the new legislative changes were sufficient to accommodate its unique institutional logic led to the study's development. It used a qualitative, doctrinal, and interpretive approach, involving content analysis of the Act through a structured, systematic examination of its regulatory areas: legal recognition, prudential requirements, governance structures, market conduct, and innovation structures. The results showed that the Act provided biased and indirect recognition of Takaful insurance, thereby perpetuating legal ambiguity and constraining institutional legitimacy. Equal capital adequacy and solvency levels were implemented to avoid placing undue compliance costs on Takaful operators, and the lack of institutionalised Shariah governance weakened regulatory consistency and consumer confidence. The research also established that a lack of distinction in protection coverage among participants and excessive distribution provisions undermined the ethical and economic value of Takaful insurance. The technology-neutral nature of the Act did not provide significant support towards the growth of Takaful specifics, even though innovation and digitalisation were recognised in the Act. The research concluded that NIIRA 2025 was an incremental, not transformative, reform to Takaful insurance in Nigeria and, therefore, that adaptive and differentiated regulatory strategies are required to ensure sustainable integration within the insurance industry.
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