International Takaful Summit 2007, LONDON

I attended the first International Takaful Summit at the Langham Hotel, Portland Place, London, Nov 1 & 2, 2007. It was organised by IBFIM short for Islamic Banking & Finance Institute Malaysia whose new CEO is an old fren, Dato' Dr Adenan Alias, former Deputy Vice-Chancellor Universiti ITM (UITM) and immediate past Vice-Chancellor Universiti Selangor (UNISEL). I was there to render support to our deputy governor bank negara malaysia Datuk Zamani, and deputy finance minister dato' Dr Awang Adek. They both gave dignitary remarks while the Lord Mayor of London gave the opening keynote address. There were 300 delegates mostly takaful operator CEOs from 26 countries.

Whenever I am in London you really never know what to expect. Strikes, gales, floods, terrorist alerts/ attacks or that you may just have to walk for miles cos the underground or passionately referred to as tubes...are closed...hahaha. I had a funny feeling something like that might happen. Hmmm true enough, the day the summit ended...that night at about 1230am while we were soundly asleep...we were woken through the PA system that there was a security alert and we all had to march down the nearest stairway. I grabbed whatever document I could and followed the crowd...the deputy finance minister was juz 2 rooms away from mine. After walking down 2 floors another announcement blurted...saying it was okay for us to get back to our hotel rooms....ish....so my gut feel was right...hmmm scary isn't it?

I was invited to sit as a panel of eminent international speaker session at NACE2007, at Las Vegas, Oct 31, 2007 but had to politely decline because of the takaful summit in London. Enjoy some of the pix at the summit....the first pix showed me with Mushtak Parker, editor of The Islamic Banker, Zaharah Wan a fren of over 30 years that goes way back to our early days at ITM (now UITM) having resided permanently with hubby wan hulaimi and their grown up kids in UK for over 20 years now, standing in the back is Juliana who is with Institut Bank Bank Malaysia (IBBM)....