The GIIF program conducted a comprehensive evaluation spanning 2016-2022 across various countries to assess its implementation and gather insights. This evaluation aligned with the six main criteria of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC): relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. The objective was to gain a holistic understanding of achievements and shortcomings, with a focus on informing future expansion and activities crucial for sustainability.

The team looked at multiple countries in Africa and Asia, mainly Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, Zambia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. To better collect lessons and best practices and learn from implementation challenges to guide future direction, the focus for country selection criteria included i) duration of GIIF engagements to see the effect of longer-term presence ii) Support provided in the form of both technical and financial involvement (direct, indirect or both), including market wide index insurance trainings to stakeholders iii) multiple regions and various geographies, representing East-West Africa, both English and French speaking countries as well as different product lines such as weather/agriculture and earthquake insurance products iv) Past projects/interventions and to include feedback/observation from stakeholders who were formerly involved in the program.

The work included a desk-research/review phase, followed by stakeholder interviews. Main activities included:
i) Identifying stakeholders already engaged or planning to engage in the agri/parametric/index index insurance markets in these markets and conducting interviews. These stakeholders were (re)insurance companies, index insurance products design firms, data providers, monitoring platforms and systems providers, other related service providers, agricultural input suppliers purchasing/distributing index insurance, finance institutions offering index insurance or bundling it with agricultural credit, farmers covered by index insurance, regulators, etc.
ii)Identify key market developments in these countries and if/when applicable in ‘spill over’ countries that can be attributed to the GIIF interventions, and iii) outlining existing factors that may be enhancing or limiting future market expansion.

All these discussions were held to identify key observations on market trends and regulatory environment, the role of the public and private sector involvement, the approaches used in product distribution, some factors that might be limiting the expansion of climate insurance in intervention countries, and opportunities for future expansion of the climate insurance market such as leveraging digital financial services to provide insurance products to smallholder farmers. This independent evaluation was conducted by a third party and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. You can view the evaluation outcome here to learn more about the content and findings.