A Comparative Analysis of Customers ’ Satisfaction for Conventional and Islamic Insurance Companies in Pakistan

Islamic finance and insurance are penetrating in international markets especially after world economic crisis since 2008. This research is an attempt to analyze customers’ satisfaction for the services of conventional and Islamic insurance companies in Pakistan. A modified SERVQUAL model is used to measure the service quality in the constructs of reliability, responsiveness, empathy, convenience and Sharīʻah compliance. For this purpose primary data of 400 customers, 173 from conventional and 227 from Islamic insurance companies, is estimated through propensity score matching as well as linear, non-linear and non-parametric classification techniques. The results on service quality indicate significant gap between expectation and perception of overall insurance industry. No significant difference of service quality is found between conventional and Islamic insurance companies in the constructs of reliability, responsiveness, convenience and empathy. The findings suggest a significant improvement in the service quality of conventional and Islamic insurance industry. Particularly, the conventional insurance companies need to focus on young people, private employees and lower income groups, whereas the Islamic insurance companies have to put more efforts to improve Sharīʻah compliance and to attract self-employed and higher income groups.


Introduction
Customers' satisfaction and service quality are certainly the two fundamental concepts that are at the core of marketing theory (Spreng & Mackoy, 1996).In current scenario of intense competition, delivery of high quality of services is the key of sustainable competitive advantage which results in satisfied customers (Shemwell et al., 1998).Risk and return are positively associated with each.But everyone wants to maximize return with minimum or no risk.Risk can be managed through better management including insurance.
In the past insurance industry has not much pressure from customers' side.Probably, the insurance customers were not much aware of insurance operations.However, the situation has been changed now and insurance industry is facing pressure from customers' demand.Customers of insurance sector are now more knowledgeable.Consumers have eight rights as declared by the International Consumers Movement, namely right to satisfaction, choose, information, basic goods and services, education, reparation and safe and clean environment (Sungip & Affiaine, 2008).
Customer satisfaction is considered as essential for customer retention and loyalty, and clearly it helps in grasping economic objectives, such as profitability, market share and return on investment (Sungip & Affiaine, 2008).Customer satisfaction leads to the growth of fianancial sector and growth of financial sector leads to the growth of economic sector of a country (Shahid et al., 2010).For the growth of any industry customer satisfaction is very important.To increase the customer satisfaction we need to know the existing level of customer satisfaction and the structure of operationalization which leads to such satisfaction (Hamid, 2011).
The financial sector of Pakistan is comprised of Islamic banks, commercial banks, investment banks, stock exchange, conventional and Islamic insurance (Takāful) companies.Security and Exchange Commision of Pakistan (SECP) is the regulator of insurance industry in Pakistan.Currently, 50 insurance companies are working in Pakistan, out of which five are Islamic insurance companies (SECP, 2013).Assets of insurance industry were 386 and 501.8 billion rupee for the years 2009 and 2011, respectively (Government of Pakistan, 2009Pakistan, , 2010Pakistan, & 2011)).
Insurance industry of Pakistan is small as compared to other regional emerging economies, yet it has vast potential for growth.In 2010 growth in real premium was 11% in emerging economies, world average was 2.7 % and in Pakistan it was 2.6% (State Bank of Pakistan, 2011).Penetration of insurance sector in Pakistan is also very low in international perspective, which indicates that insurance companies are not fully utilizing their potential (State Bank of Pakistan, 2011).
A few studies have been done on banking sector of Pakistan for checking the service quality (for instance Naeem et al., 2009;Ahmad et al., 2010;Khalid et al., 2011).According to best of our knowledge no study has been done to compare the service quality of Islamic insurance as well as conventional insurance in the context of Pakistan.Thus, the basic objective of this study is to analyze customer satisfaction on the basis of service quality for conventional and Islamic insurance industry.The specific research questions are as under:  What are the demographic characteristics of the respondents and does the level of customer satisfaction of conventional and Islamic insurance companies depend on these demographic characteristics? What is the level of customer satisfaction in terms of service quality of conventional and Islamic insurance companies? How far the preferences of customers of conventional and Islamic insurance companies differ from each other?
The study will provide recommendations to policy makers and practitioners to enhance customer's satisfaction in terms of certain aspects in order to increase the level of service quality for future growth of insurance industry in Pakistan.

Conventional Versus Islamic Insurance
Apparently both conventional and Islamic insurance contract look similar but there are some factors in conventional insurance contradictory to Islamic law (Sharīʻah) including uncertainty of price and delivery of product (Gharar), gambling (Maysir), interest (Ribā), violation of Islamic law of inheritance (Mīrath) and unlawful appropriation of others' property (Akȗl-ȗl-Māl-Bil-Batil).First factor is 'uncertainty' (Gharar).In conventional insurance uncertainty of payment is accepted as agreed in the contract and the amount as well as the time of payment is not defined in case of mishap.Second factor is gambling (Maysir).Participants contribute small sums in hope of gaining larger sums.Premiums paid by the participants are lost, when events do not occur.
If claims are more than premiums in value then the insurance company is in shortfall.Third factor is interest (Ribā).It results when earnings of insurance company are paid to the insured on claims (Lian & Aziz, 2006).
Interest accrues to the insured when the indemnity is more than the premium and to the insurer when indemnity is less than the premium.Fourth factor is the violation of Islamic law of inheritance (Mīrath).In conventional insurance the compensation is given to the nominees and not to the legal heirs.Fifth factor is unlawful appropriation of others' property (Akȗl-ȗl-Māl-Bil-Batil).If no loss occurs, then all premiums are kept by the insurer in general insurance contract.
Islamic insurance (Takāful) is being practiced on the basis of profit and loss sharing (Mudārabah), principal-agent contract (Wakālah) and endowment fund sum principal-agent contract (Waqf-Wakālah) (Note 1).The last model is commonly used by different Islamic insurance companies in Pakistan.The basic purpose of this fund is to provide support to participants in case of certain losses according to the rules of the Waqf fund (Wahab et al., 2007).
In this model at first endowment fund (Waqf) is created by the investors.Participants contribute to the endowment fund.Insurance operator acts as an agent of the endowment.Operator makes investments of endowment fund and shareholders capital on profit and loss (Mudārabah) basis.The operator takes a share in profit from investment and fee from contributions.Claims are fulfilled on the basis of donations by the endowment fund. www

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Sources: Kha There are summarize It is very challenging task to satisfy customers in any business; hence it is also very difficult to meet the expectation of customers in service sector.There are many studies which have been conducted to find this gap of service quality as a differential of expectation and perception by using SERVQUAL model (e.g., Tahir et al., 2006;Kumar et al., 2009;Leo, 2009;Sadeghi & Farokhian, 2011).Safakli and Veli (2007) concluded that perceived service quality was lower than the level of expectation and a service quality gap was significant in SERVQUAL dimensions, i.e., expectations were very higher than perception in banking sector of Northern Cyprus.Another study on banking sector in Pakistan revealed that customers perceived highest satisfaction in the dimensions of responsiveness and reliability.Little gap was found between expectation and perception in these dimensions of SERVQUAL (Khalid et al., 2011).
Service quality may differ between firms, i.e., one firm may offer better services than other one.Some previous studies concluded that the overall SERVQUAL gap for Islamic banks was meaningfully greater than the conventional banks (Kumar et al., 2009).Some studies used compliance (Sharīʻah compatibility in business) as an additional dimension to the conventional dimensions of SERVQUAL and revealed that the compliance was significant attribute that contributed to the criteria for choosing Islamic financial institutions that offered Islamic products in the market (Othman & Owen, 2001;Osman & Ali, 2009).
Some studies estimated the service quality of insurance companies.One of these studies showed that there was huge gap between perception and expectation of SERVQUAL for reliability, responsiveness and empathy in Malaysian insurance industry.Reliability came up as the most important element of SERVQUAL in Malaysian insurance industry (Sungip, 2008).In another study it was revealed that service quality was found less satisfactory in reliability, responsiveness and empathy dimensions in Indian life insurance industry (Upadhyaya & Badlani, 2011).
Checking the service quality of Islamic insurance is also an important task.For this purpose SERVQUAL is also useful instrument for gauging the service quality of insurance sector.

Models for Measuring Service Quality
There are a number of models which have been used to assess service quality of firms.Parasuraman et al. (1985) developed SERVQUAL model which is also called gap model.This model has been widely used in different types of industries such as fast food restaurant, hospitals, business schools, banking and insurance sectors (Ladhari, 2009).The model considers in first stage demographics of customers and in second stage five dimensions of service which are tangibility, reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness.The later stage has 22 questions for expectation and 22 for perception.Service quality is determined by analyzing the gap between expectation and perception.This model has been used by various researchers as mentioned in Table 2.  Cronin and Taylor (1992) developed SERVEPERF model by using five original dimensions of SERVQUAL.They were of the view that if they eliminate the dimension of 'expectation', the questionnaire would be friendlier for respondents, because it decreases the number of questions from 44 to 22.But on other hand Parasuraman et al. (1994) argued that expectation and perception gap gives both the desired and adequate levels of service quality.Sureshchandar et al. (2001) developed a model to check the customer satisfaction in Indian banks.In this model there are five service quality factors which are considered important for customers.First factor is core service or service product (features that are offered in a service).Second factor is human element of service delivery (reliability, assurance, empathy, responsiveness).Third factor is non-human element (the process procedure and technology).Fourth factor is tangibility of services (equipment, signage and employee appearances).Fifth factor is social responsibility (reasonable cost, equal treatment of customers etc.).There are total 41 questions on seven point Likert scale and it is only for checking the perception not for gap analysis.Othman et al. (2001) developed CARTER model by using five original dimensions of SERVQUAL, and one additional dimension of compliance to check the Sharīʻah compatibility of Islamic financial institutions.
Compliance dimension contains nine items.This model is basically designed for checking the customer satisfaction in Islamic financial institutions including Islamic banks and insurance companies.This model also contains two parts.First part deals with demographics of customers.In second part, by using a 5 point Likert scale anchored at "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree", respondents are asked to evaluate parameters on service quality relevant to the banking or insurance industry.Evangelos and Rand (2006) developed GIQUAL model to check the service quality of insurance firms.It is a SERVQUAL type service-quality instrument which was developed for Greek insurance.It contains 5 dimensions (namely tangibility, empathy, assurance, reliability and responsiveness) and 25 questions.A four-section questionnaire is used in this model.First section deals with demographics.Second section consists of GIQUAL dimensions.Third section contains questions on which respondent are asked on overall satisfaction with their respective insurance firm and its services on a scale of 1 to 10. Fourth section appraises customers' emotional and behavioral loyalty levels.Siddiqui and Sharma (2010) constructed another model to check the satisfaction of insurance customers in India.
There are six dimensions in this instrument, namely personalized financial planning, assurance, competence, tangibles and technology and corporate image.These dimensions were used in a cross-sectional descriptive research design for the study of service quality structure in life insurance sector.This instrument is like a SERVQUAL questionnaire.The questionnaire is comprised of two sections.First part contains information relating to different demographic and socioeconomic criteria like age, educational qualification, profession and income.In second part, respondents are asked to assess those parameters on service quality which are relevant to insurance industry on a 5 point scale, i.e., "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree".This part consists of 26 statements regarding various aspects of service quality for both expectations and perception scores.
The models which we discussed above were developed by different researchers in different times for checking the service quality of firms.Most of the above mentioned models were used for checking the service quality of This im of including this variable is to know the purpose of choosing specific insurance company and specific insurance policy by the respondents.If the insurance providers know the preferences of the clients then they would be in a better situation to tailor the products according to the needs of clients.

Data
Data collection on micro level in developing economies is a very difficult task.There are 50 registered conventional and Islamic insurance companies working in Pakistan (SECP, 2013).The population of this study includes general insurance and life insurance companies operating in Pakistan.The study period is 2012.
For data collection, a questionnaire was devised to ensure that all relevant information required for analysis could be acquired.Four hundred valid responses were collected, two hundred and twenty three responses from Islamic and rest from conventional insurance sector.Data was collected through self-administrated, pre-structured questionnaire, consisted of four parts.First part related to demographics of customers.Second part consisted questions about policyholders' expectation on the service delivered by the relevant insurance companies.Expectations were acquired on the 24 service attributes.Third part checked the perception of customers consisted of 24 service attributes.Fourth section included the preferences of respondents for choosing the specific insurance firm and it was consisted of seven attributes on four points interval scale.For making the sample more representative of population, we used random sampling from the customers of the relevant insurance companies.In this study most of the sample was taken from Rawalpindi and Islamabad area due to time and financial constraints and because the people in twin-cities have access to all kinds of insurance channels and thus can be considered as the representative of the target population for the assessment of insurance service quality in Pakistan.For the convenience of the respondents, we translated the questionnaire in Urdu and also created online questionnaire.

Results and Discussion
In this section first we analyze the demographics of the respondents.Then we check service quality of the insurance industry.After that we do comparative analysis of customer satisfaction.Lastly, preferences of customers are analyzed to derive suitable policy guide.

Analysis of the Demographics of Respondents
In this section analysis is made for each variable of demographic characteristics of respondents.Results are given in Table 3. Being a male dominated society in Pakistan, less than five percent of the respondents belong to female group.
First variable is insurance category.Results of frequency analysis show that most of the respondents have individual life insurance and motor vehicle policy having a share of 41 and 28 percent, respectively.On third place the respondents have health policy (9%).
Second category is educational level of respondents.The statistics reflect that 2/3 of all respondents are graduates and only 3% of the respondents have finished high school.
Third category is type of education.46% of the policy holders have business and financial type of education and 34% have arts education.Thus, we may conclude that the frequency of taking insurance policy is more among those persons who have knowledge in business and finance.Now, we consider the frequency as per age of the respondents.The results of this category show that more than 2/3 of all respondents (68%) have age between 26-50 years.It means majority of the respondents belongs to active age.More than 1/4 of all respondents belong to young policyholders having age between 18-25 years.
The frequency was also checked in context of profession of respondents.52% of the respondents are by profession private employees.Second and third dominant categories are students and self-employed.Thus, we can conclude that private employees are more interested to have an insurance policy than government employees.
Lastly, we tested the frequency of respondents in relation with level of income.Most of the respondents' income level is 36-45 thousands rupees, their percentage is 21.The second largest category belongs to the income level of 26-35 thousand rupee, which is 20 percent of overall respondents.16.8% of the respondents have income range of 16-25 thousand rupee.Thus, more than half of the respondents belong to middle income group having income range of 16-45 thousand rupee per month.Only 29% of the respondents belongs to lowest income range of 5-25 thousands rupee and highest income range of more than 56 thousand rupee is 17%.Thus, we may conclude that most of the respondents are private employee as well as students and majority of the respondents belongs to the age group of 26-50 years.Most of the respondents belong to the middle income group.Majority of the respondents have business and finance education.Now we address the question whether the level of customer satisfaction depends on the above mentioned demographic factors.For this purpose we apply Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique.The results of PSM are given in Table 4.With respect to life insurance customers of Islamic insurance are more satisfied than the customers of conventional insurance.However, in case of non-life insurance and level of education no visible difference of customer satisfaction can be ascertained between both types of insurance companies.
By considering education in business and finance customers of Islamic insurance companies are relatively more satisfied than the customers of conventional insurance companies.Respondents having medical and engineering education have different responses on service quality of conventional and Islamic insurance companies.
Respondents having medical education are more satisfied with conventional insurance companies as compared to the respondents of Islamic insurance companies.Conversely, respondents of Islamic insurance companies having engineering education are more satisfied than the respondents of conventional insurance companies.However, these results cannot be considered as significant due to low level of frequency of relevant respondents.
The respondents whose income level is less than 35 thousands rupee per month are more satisfied with Islamic insurance companies than their counterparts.Conversely, the respondents whose income level is more than 35 thousands rupee per month are more satisfied with conventional insurance companies than their counterparts.
By considering profession of the respondents students and private employee are more satisfied with Islamic insurance companies, while self-employed are more satisfied with conventional insurance companies.
In case of age factor young people are relatively more un-satisfied with conventional insurance companies and people with mature age are more un-satisfied with Islamic insurance companies.
In short, people in mature age, having monthly income of more than 35, 000 Rupee and self-employed are more satisfied with the conventional insurance companies, whereas young people and students with income level less than 35000 Rupee per month, having education in business and finance and private employee are more satisfied with the Islamic insurance companies.

Analysis of Overall Industry on Customers' Expectation
The results of analysis of entire industry (conventional and Islamic insurance) are given in Table 5.The results depict that the expectation of reliability which is the first construct for customer satisfaction of this questionnaire, has average value of 4.58 which reflects that respondents' demand on reliability is between 'strongly agree' and 'agree'.It is bit more toward 'strongly agree'.In this construct respondents were highly demanding on fourth variable, i.e., 'the company should perform the services at first possible instance'.Second construct is responsiveness with mean value of 4.57.It is also in between 'strongly agree' and 'agree'.Respondents' demand in this construct is higher than the demand in the first construct.In this construct respondents' demand on first and second variable is highest, i.e. 'company's employee should provide prompt services and should always willing to help customers'.
The average of third construct is at 4.55 which is empathy.It means respondents' demand on this construct is equal to the demand for responsiveness.In this construct the demand on first variable is highest, i.e. 'company should provide individual services to its customers'.
Fourth construct is convenience.Its average is at 4.60.It means respondents are between 'strongly agree' and 'agree' on convenience.In this construct respondent are more demanding on first and fifth variable.In other words, the customers are demanding more that the company should provide priority services to elderly and disable persons, give adequate guidance and information to use insurance services and ascertain prompt and hassle free settlement of claims.The respondents are highly demanding on convenient hour and location of branch.Next one is compliance, i.e., adoption of Sharīʻah rules by Islamic insurance companies.The average of this construct is 4.82, which is near to 'strongly agree'.It means respondents are strongly demanding the Sharīʻah compliance from Islamic insurance companies.It might be due to the demand of Sharīʻah compliant products in Pakistan.
Mean of the expectations of reliability, responsiveness, empathy and convenience is 4.62 which is in between 'strongly agree' and 'agree'.Respondents' expectation on all constructs is more or less equal to one, i.e., they are on near to 'strongly agree'.

Analysis of Overall Industry on Customers' Perception
Results in Table 5 depict that the average perception on reliability is 3.94 which is showing that respondents' response is on 'agree'.In this construct respondents' perception on first variable is high, i.e., 'company employees are trustworthy, confident and honest'.Its value is 4.24.The value of perception on sixth variable of this construct is 3.82.It means that the customers perceive low value on keeping them informed about the services rendered by the insurance company.Second construct is responsiveness.On this construct average is 3.89, which is in between 'agree' to 'neutral'.Respondents' perception is low in this construct.The perception on fifth variable, namely 'employees facilitate me through mobile and internet' is low as compared to other variables in this construct.Third construct is empathy.Similar to the second construct, the mean of this construct is 3.89 which lies in between 'agree' and 'neutral'.In this construct respondents are less satisfied on fourth variable as compared to others which is 'employees are able to understand customers' specific needs'.Fourth construct on convenience has respondents' average response at 3.89 which lies between 'agree' and 'neutral'.In this construct the respondents' perception on third variable is low, i.e., 'company provides prompt and hassle free claim settlement'.On fifth variable it is high which is 'operating hours are convenient to customers'.In the fifth construct average perception on compliance is 3.92 which is near to 'agree' level.It means respondents do agree that Islamic insurance companies are following the Sharīʻah rules in their decisions.Average perception on reliability, responsiveness, empathy and convenience is 3.92 which is in between 'agree' and 'neutral'.Results depict that companies need to do more efforts for increasing the perception of clients on all constructs.Perception of respondents is recorded low on all constructs but specifically on the constructs of responsiveness and convenience.Thus, companies need to do more efforts to improve the perception level of customer.

Analysis of Overall Industry on Customers' Satisfaction
Level of customer satisfaction depends on the overall gap between the expectation and perception of this test (Service Quality = Expectation -Perception).If the gap is high, the customers are less satisfied and vice versa.
Here the result on gap, as shown in Table 5, is statistically significant.The gap is E -P= 0.70.It means expectations are higher than perception.Industry still needs to improve its quality of services on different constructs (i.e., reliability, responsiveness, empathy and convenience) to increase the level of customers' satisfaction.

Comparative Analysis of Islamic and Conventional Insurance Industries
One of the objectives of this study is to have a comparative look at the performance of conventional and Islamic insurance industries with respect to their service quality.Hence, the study runs independent sample t-test, by creating two sub-samples out of our general sample.
The results of our test, as reflected in Table 6, show that overall service quality difference between Islamic and conventional insurance industries is random, as the significance value of 0.57 renders the mean difference as insignificant.Similar is the case with various constructs of expectation and perception generally showing insignificant results.Gaps between expectation and perception in each construct of SERVQUAL for Islamic and conventional companies are given in Table 7.The results for the constructs of reliability, responsiveness, empathy and convenience, are insignificant.
However, significant difference is found in the variable of Sharīʻah compliance of Islamic insurance business.The mean of service quality gap in this construct for Islamic companies is at 0.60 and that of conventional is 1.30.It means that the customers of Islamic insurance companies consider Islamic insurance service provider at a better level of Sharīʻah compliance as compared to those of conventional insurance companies.To have a snap short of the above discussion under the results of independent sample t test, it can be inferred that the customers of Islamic insurance companies are better informed than their counterparts about the basic concepts of Sharīʻah relevant to insurance and the Sharīʻah compatibility of their company, while with regard to all other constructs of service quality both types of customers are insignificantly different.

Company wise Analysis on Customer Satisfaction
In this part we compare different firms on service quality.Results and frequency of the respondents for each company are given in Table 8. Results show that average expectation on all constructs for Askari General Insurance and Pak-Qatar General Takaful is near to 'agree' level and for rest of the insurance companies it tends to 'strongly agree' level.However, no significant difference is observed on perception basis that tends to be at 'agree' level.The table depicts that overall Askari General Insurance is showing better results.Its gap between expectation and perception is lower as compared to all other companies.Thus, customers of Askari General Insurance are more satisfied.In Islamic insurance sector, results of Pak-Qatar General Takāful are on second place.Results depict that customers of EFU General Insurance are least satisfied as compared to the customers of other companies.

Analysis of Preferences of Respondents for Insurance Industry
Preference is the last part of this questionnaire.Respondents were asked about the reasons of taking the insurance policy and the extent of importance given to specific factors, i.e., high, medium, low and no importance represented by the integers 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively.Results are shown in Table 9.First variable of preference is Sharīʻah compliance of the insurance business.Overall 54 % of respondents give high importance to the Sharīʻah compliance of the business and 27% give no importance to this factor.Second preference is about the motivation from religion.41% of respondents consider it highly important while choosing the insurance company whereas 15% do not give any importance to this factor.Third preference is interest free insurance business.57% of respondents consider this factor highly important and 10% consider it as not important.Fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh preferences relate to risk management, low cost, return and easy access to insurance services, respectively.For all these factors 78% to 94% respondents give high to medium importance and only less than 10% respondents give no importance to these factors.

Comparison of Conventional & Islamic Insurance Industry on Preferences
When we make a comparison between conventional and Islamic insurance industry on the basis of preferences as reflected in Table 10, one thing which is very important to note is that the respondents of Islamic insurance companies give more importance to Sharīʻah compliance factor of insurance companies as compared to the respondents of the conventional insurance companies.For example, first preference is about the Sharīʻah compliance of insurance business, 83% of Islamic insurance respondents consider it highly important while only 15% of the conventional insurance respondents consider it highly important.Second preference is the motivation from religion.91% customers of Islamic insurance consider this factor highly and medium important while 45% of the respondents of conventional insurance consider it as highly important.In case of third factor, namely insurance business to be interest free, 72% of the Islamic insurance customers consider it highly important, whereas only 37% of the customers of conventional insurance consider it as highly important.As far as risk management, low cost, return and easy access to insurance services are concerned the ratios of the respondents of both types of companies are similar.74% to 97% of respondents give medium to high importance and only less than 10% respondents give no importance to these factors.

Conclusions and Recommendations
Results on service quality indicate that overall insurance industry gap between expectation and perception is significant, i.e., expectation is higher than perception.The gap is visible on all constructs of service quality.
Results also depict that insignificant difference is found on service quality between conventional and Islamic insurance companies on the constructs of reliability, responsiveness, empathy and convenience.However, significant difference is found on the construct of Sharīʻah compliance between conventional and Islamic insurance companies.Respondents of Islamic insurance companies are more concerned to Sharīʻah compliance as compared to their conventional counterparts.
This study suggests a significant improvement in the service quality and efficiency of conventional and Islamic insurance industry of Pakistan.In this regard both types of insurance companies have to focus on effective risk management, low cost of insurance, hassle free settlement of claims and easy access to insurance services.Particularly, the conventional insurance companies need to focus on young people, private employees and lower income groups, whereas the Islamic insurance companies have to put more efforts to improve Sharīʻah compliance and to attract self-employed and higher income groups.

Table 2 .
SERVQUAL applications in previous researches

Table 3 .
Demographics of the respondents *Age in years and income in thousands Rupee per month.

Table 4 .
Propensity score matching

Table 5 .
Overall insurance industry on customer satisfaction

Table 6 .
Comparative analysis of islamic & conventional insurance industries

Table 8 .
Company-wise analysis on customer satisfaction