Microinsurance

According to the International Labour Organisation micro-insurance alone may not be enough to protect the poor in developing nations from natural disasters and weather related catastrophe events. Where extreme weather events and disasters are concerned the ILO recommends the use of what they have termed meso-insurance or macro-insurance schemes as micro-insurance may be too localised […]

The United Nations climate experts have published a lengthy report looking at mechanisms and methods to help make societies more resilient to natural disasters and severe weather events. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change discusses the billions of dollars of damages caused by extreme weather and climate events in recent years, whether […]

The uptake of microinsurance by low-income earners in parts of the developing world is growing rapidly according to data in the annual report of the International Labour Organisation’s Micro-insurance Innovation Facility. Many types of products make up the microinsurance universe, from life and health, to property, to livestock, but one area playing a key role […]

Tea growers in Kenya could soon have access to a new way to protect themselves against loss of earnings caused by frost damaging their tea plantations according to this article in Business Daily Africa. The Kenya Tea Development Agency, which is a marketing agency for half a million small farmers, is looking to launch an […]

With funding secured from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, a new microinsurance scheme is being planned through the combined efforts of reinsurer Munich Re, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility and broker MicroEnsure. Funded with €2m for three years to help further the project, the three parties are being brought together under the […]

HDFC Ergo General Insurance in India have announced that they have made their first payments under their weather-index insurance programme due to heavy rainfall in the Dewas district of India. The index based weather microinsurance coverage was offered for this first time in 2011 to protect soybean farmers from heavy rainfall.

The companies behind the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative weather-index microinsurance pilot program, which is currently operating in Ethiopia but plans to expand, have announced that the first successful payout to policyholders has been successfully made. Over 1,800 farmers in seven villages experienced drought conditions that triggered a payout under the terms of their index-based insurance […]

The Micro Insurance Catastrophe Risk Organisation (MiCRO) has signed a grant agreement supporting their parametric catastrophe micro-insurance programme for Haiti with the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). The CDB will be administering the multi-donor trust fund that supports the operations of MiCRO.

Swiss Re and USAID have announced a three year partnership with one of their main aims being to reduce the costs of natural disasters in the Americas, Africa and Asia. By enabling better access to customized, market based insurance products they hope to help farmers and families become more resilient to the impacts of droughts, […]

Kenya is again suffering from a drought which is causing hardship and deaths among the millions of affected people in the region. The resulting food crisis is one of the worst seen and despite the global awareness of the plight of drought affected Africans the support they receive remains minimal. However the drought has shown […]