In its Topics Online article, Munich Re reported that many risks are not yet sufficiently covered by insurance in developing and emerging countries , resulting in the so-called protection gap, which is the difference between total economic loss and insured loss. Joaquim Levy, Managing Director and World Bank Group CFO, addressed the topic in a speech at this year’s Chief Risk Officer Assembly in Munich . "We are concerned about the fact that in many emerging-market countries, risk-sharing mechanisms such as insurance are not sufficiently developed in view of the significant challenges posed by

On Chinadialogue.net, Zhang Chun, Senior Researcher at Chinadialogue, wrote that the Chinese government is pushing the insurance industry to offer climate risk policies, as climate changes increases the frequency and severity of typhoons. In the agricultural sector, the most relevant type of insurance policy related to climate change in China is called climate index insurance. Instead of determining pay-outs on the basis of damage and loss, policies are based on a weather index that sets compensation levels based on different weather conditions, such as rainfall," Zhang adds. Click here to

In mid September, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) helped launch an innovative new data platform in Lusaka, Zambia that combines satellite rainfall estimates with the country’s existing network of rain gauges. The platform, developed with the Zambia Meteorological Department and through funding from NASA, is the latest to come out of IRI’s Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative which aims to address the persistent problem of data scarcity and lack of access to climate information products in many African countries. The World Bank Group’s

The World Bank has worked with insurers, reinsurers, brokers, banks, agribusinesses and governments to develop index insurance programs through the Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Program and the Global Index Insurance Facility, managed out of the Finance and Markets Global Practice. As climate change adaptation and disaster risk management have become mainstream in development work, focus on index insurance has increased because uninsured losses keep vulnerable populations in poverty. In a World Bank feature story, two experts reflect on their work on index insurance and its use as a