microfinance

The Mexican insurance association AMIS has been working on a microinsurance pilot in collaboration with a government agency called Pronafim (National Program for Microfinance). So far they have sold in excess of 50,000 microinsurance life policies which is great market penetration for a new type of product.

Sompo Japan has been trialing a weather risk microinsurance product in a region of Thailand since January this year (our article on the launch here). The trial project saw weather index insurance for drought sold in Khon Kaen province in Northeast Thailand. It was the first such microinsurance product made available in Thailand.

ICICI Lombard, the Indian insurer who have championed weather risk protection on a microinsurance basis, are launching yet another pilot scheme aimed to help rural farmers.

Sometimes new products appear on the market which are both innovative and interesting to us here at Artemis. This one is particularly interesting as it utilises satellites to assess pasture greenness to create an index against which insurance products can be triggered.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, has officially launched the long awaited Global Index Insurance Facility. I’ve written about the facility in the past when it was still in pilot phase but now it has been launched in partnership with the European Commission and the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign […]

Reinsurance firm SCOR has demonstrated the attraction that microinsurance has as a new line of business by investing in the first microinsurance fund LeapFrog Investments Ltd. Microinsurance is receiving increasing interest from the wider insurance and reinsurance markets as they realise that as well as providing cover to people in developing countries who previously had […]

Agriculture Insurance Company of India is preparing to begin offering weather insurance cover for mangos and apples in selected producing blocks in Himachal, India. This pilot scheme is being run to assess whether the product works for the insured, insurer and government prior to a larger rollout (if successful).

We’ve been big supporters (read our previous coverage here) of the various weather and catastrophe related microinsurance programs being piloted around the world over the last few years. While not perfect, these schemes are helping to get much needed cover to business people in developing countries to help them hedge against the very real weather […]

Swiss Re has announced that the drought risk management initiative they have been part of in Ethiopia will be expanding to take in a number of new villages and at least one new crop over the next year. Swiss Re, Oxfam America, The Rockefeller Foundation and The International Research Institute for Climate and Society at […]

A new report highlights te potential for major losses due to climate change. Some countries could see costs mounting to as much as 19% of their GDP by 2030 according to the report by the Economics of Climate Adaptation Working Group (a partnership between the Global Environment Facility, McKinsey & Company, Swiss Re, the Rockefeller […]