Financial services major Dubai Group, part of the government-owned Dubai Holding, is launching an insurance firm in December, an official was quoted as saying.

'It will be completely owned by the Dubai Group and it will be a conventional (insurance company),' Thomas S Volpe was quoted as saying in a Gulf News report.

'If you look at the insurance business in this part of the world compared to any other developed region, the penetration of it is tiny. So there is a huge opportunity to not only have individuals who buy more insurance but more people who don't have insurance to buy. Then you got the huge increase in population, so there is a big opportunity.'

The insurance company will be headquarted in Dubai, and will slowly expand across the Gulf and beyond to cover  Mena, India, and Kazakhstan, he added.