Blue Marble & World Food Programme expand index insurance partnership

Blue Marble Microinsurance (Blue Marble) has announced an expansion of its weather-index parametric insurance partnership with The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Africa.

Blue Marble, backed by its shareholding global insurance, reinsurance and broking firms, has already been active offering its socially impactful, commercially viable parametric insurance protection to the underserved in Africa, but now the startup has signed up to a long term agreement with the WFP to be a provider of weather index insurance solutions across the African continent.

Aiming to improve smallholder farmers financial security, through the delivery of responsive, affordable insurance solutions, the pair hope to help more people and increase uptake of index insurance in the region.

Blue Marble and WFP have been collaborating in Zimbabwe since 2018, in the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative. This program has resulted in responsive insurance risk transfer products using parametric index triggers to protect smallholder farmers against drought.

Blue Marble said it has developed an insurance offering that can be customised according to soil types, crops, seed varieties and farming practices.

The solution utilises satellite technology to monitor the parameters that can trigger insurance payouts, which it notes removes the need for costly in-field assessment.

“We are excited to expand our partnership with WFP across Africa building on the work we have done in Zimbabwe and our joint commitment to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers to climate risk”, commented Jaime de Piniés, Head of Africa at Blue Marble.

Lorenzo Bosi, Resilience and Climate Change Coordinator for WFP Zimbabwe, added, “Working with a dynamic company such as Blue Marble will allow WFP to further scale up and refine innovative climate risk solutions for food insecure and vulnerable people, leveraging on private sector expertise.”

Blue Marble has been active in Zimbabwe since 2016 and says it is committed to advancing financial inclusion programs for underserved populations in Africa. The company is expanding the reach of its weather index insurance solutions across the continent, alongside WFP and other partners.

Just a week ago, Blue Marble said it had renewed and expanded a Colombia smallholder coffee grower parametric weather insurance program.