Microinsurance

Reinsurance firm Swiss Re has assisted with the development and launch of the first weather derivative backed microinsurance scheme which aims to protect smallholder farmers in Nigeria from the risk of adverse weather patterns.

Reinsurance giant Munich Re have teamed up with Germany’s Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbelt (GIZ) GmbH to establish a risk transfer system for agriculture in Peru.

The Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF), a weather and disaster insurance facility managed by International Finance Corporation alongside the World Bank, has received funding to help it expand the use of index insurance in agriculture.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has signed two grant agreements totaling $3.9m, with the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture to expand a weather index insurance pilot to over one million East African farmers.

Insurers providing weather-index or parametric insurance policies in India are facing heavy losses due to the impact of cyclones on agricultural regions. Weather-index insurance firms may see loss ratios as high as 100% due to heavy crop losses, according to a report.

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.

The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) is broadening its reach with its first venture into personal insurance products and is supporting trials of a parametric personal weather insurance product designed to pay out to Caribbean residents after a natural disaster strikes.

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 […]

The Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organisation (MiCRO), a specialty reinsurance organisation established to provide the backing for microinsurance products through microfinance institutions in Haiti, has received $1.96m in funding from the IFC (International Finance Corporation), a member of the World Bank Group. The award includes a $1.7 million performance-based grant and $260,000 in technical assistance from […]