index based insurance

Sciemus, the London-based specialist risk modelling and analytics firm for insurance and reinsurance markets, has launched what it terms a “unique” weather hedging management product, an index-based lack of sunlight insurance cover for solar farm operators.

The World Bank continues to aid in the fight against severe weather and climate change’s impact on developing regions of the globe, with the announcement of a new partnership with AXA Corporate Solutions on parametric weather insurance.

As Nigeria continues to grow its presence in the global agriculture market, officials from the country’s Government met in London recently to discuss a desire to increase the use of index-based insurance schemes for local smallholder farmers.

International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, is developing an index-based insurance product to protect banks in Indonesia that provide loans to individuals and micro, small and medium enterprises from losses following earthquakes and other disasters.

A new pilot scheme offering flood insurance to residents of a region of Bangladesh using a parametric product based on flood depths has been launched by a group of organisations including Oxfam and Swiss Re. The product aims to use alternative risk transfer techniques to protect poor residents of river basin areas of the country.

The global penetration of microinsurance cover is set to double from the 500m people currently covered to more than 1 billion by 2020, according to a statement from the Microinsurance Network. Governments, insurers and reinsurers are all expected to broaden he geographic scope and range of products as they seek to make insurance products available […]

According to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, global crop insurance claims in 2012 reached a massive $23 billion. Munich Re attributes as much as $15 billion of these losses in the U.S. due to the severe drought in 2012. Crop losses are growing with increasing insurance penetration and in years to come these figures […]

The latest sigma report published by reinsurer Swiss Re discusses the issue of agricultural insurance and reinsurance in emerging markets and suggests that premiums are set to grow fourfold over the next decade or so. Currently the emerging economies of the world make up around 22% of global agricultural insurance premiums, at $5.2 billion, with […]

Here’s another example of the successful application of parametric weather-index based insurance techniques in developing economies. Insurer Jubilee Insurance recently made payouts under their weather index insurance scheme to over 200 cotton farmers in Baringo County, Kenya for their losses suffered after crops failed due to a lack of measured rainfall.

We’ve written about the application of weather index insurance products, where payouts are based on parametric indices of actual climatic conditions such as temperature, moisture or rainfall, many times in our coverage of the growing microinsurance sector. Use of weather index insurance has enabled microinsurance to become more widespread as the policy terms and conditions […]