On 10 December 2020, the Council of the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) adopted the following new standards:

• IFSB-24: Guiding Principles on Investor Protection in Islamic Capital Markets. The objectives of IFSB-24 are to: (i) identify the Islamic finance-specific issues that need to be considered within regulatory frameworks for investor protection; (ii) define best practices for investor protection in relation to the specific features of the Islamic capital market; (iii) support the development of robust investor protection frameworks for the Islamic capital market; and (iv) increase harmonisation of regulatory practice, to support the development of international Islamic capital markets.
• IFSB-25: Disclosures to Promote Transparency and Market Discipline for Takāful/Retakāful Undertakings. The main objectives of the IFSB-25 are to:  (i) facilitate access to relevant, reliable and timely information by takāful market players generally, and by takāful participants in particular, thereby enhancing their capacity to monitor and assess the performance of takāful undertakings (TUs) / retakāful undertakings (RTUs); (ii) improve comparability and consistency of all disclosures made by takāful operators (TOs) / retakāful operators (RTOs); (iii) support the protection of current and potential participants, by helping TOs to offer useful information disclosures on takāful products; and (iv) enable market players to complement and support, through their actions in the market, the implementation of the IFSB standards.

The soft copies of IFSB-24 and IFSB-25 will be available on the IFSB website, www.ifsb.org in both English and Arabic languages in due course.