The AAIB, Sri Lanka’s national agricultural insurer, partnered with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to modernize agricultural insurance provision in the country. Kasundari, the Team Lead for the project, joined us to share their experience in digitizing agricultural information as part of this project. Background Imagine having to walk through a paddy tract consisting of hundreds of small fields in a rural area, sometimes without proper roads, seeking to identify a particular paddy of land. The mission is to verify an insurance claim in that field. For insurers offering...

Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven, Director General at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) reflects in an interview with GIIF on Germany’s commitment to fight climate change . At COP25, Germany pledged more than EUR 100million to support climate risk finance and insurance solutions under the InsuResilience Global Partnership, EUR10million of which are to support GIIF in 2020-2022. GIIF: What do you think about the outcome of the most recent COP25 in Madrid? COP25 stayed well behind expectations as it did not deliver concrete results in many crucial areas. Several...

On Jan 23, 2020, Steven Collet, Director and Ambassador for Business and Development at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, received an interview with the GIIF team in Washington, DC about his policy priorities, his expectations in GIIF, and the newly launched Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD). A major donor to GIIF, the Government of the Netherlands, supports the Program in more than 10 countries in Africa and Asia, including special initiatives such as the insuretech-related innovations and the capacity building activities targeted to (re) insurers to establish...

Agricultural insurance can provide vulnerable agriculturalists with certainty in the face of natural disasters such as drought, reducing dependence on harmful coping mechanisms, and ultimately leading to increased financial resilience of the individual and the wider community and economy. This 90-minute tech session provided an overview of how the World Bank and IFC jointly support governments, private sector insurers, and households to manage financially in an increasingly volatile world. Three country cases (Zambia, Nigeria, and Pakistan) were presented and discussed at this tech session...

On November 15, 2019, the Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) hosted a full-day seminar, International Experience with Agriculture Insurance: Providing Financial Protection Against Climate Risks, in Washington, DC. In his opening remarks, Mr. Olivier Mahul, Practice Manager of Crisis and Disaster Risk Finance (CDRF), reflected on his 15-year career at the World Bank starting with involvement in Index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) in Mongolia followed by crop insurance scheme in India to offer his insights on how the agriculture insurance has evolved by tacking various challenges. He...

The agricultural sector depends highly on nature, making it constantly exposed to exacerbating climate and disaster risks. To mitigate the problem, agriculture insurance and index insurance are regarded as valuable risk-management instruments because they allow farmers to continue to have access to finance and to build resilience against future risks. Having agriculture insurance is especially relevant in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia where 450 million smallholder farmers feed up to 80 percent of the developing world, according to the World Food Program . While insurance companies...

Vijayasekar Kalavakonda, GIIF Senior Financial Sector Specialist, talks about current GIIF's activity in Pakistan. Could you please tell us about what the Global Index Insurance Facility is doing in Pakistan? The “ Punjab Agriculture and Rural Transformation Project " is currently under implementation after it was approved in December 2017. Led by the World Bank Group’s Agriculture Practice, the project aims at increasing the productivity of crop and livestock farmers, improving their climate resilience, and fostering agribusiness development in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. Global Index...

Smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are some of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and adverse weather events. Weather-based index insurance can help farmers become more resilient by giving them a tool to manage their risk, protect their investment, and maintain their livelihood. But the insurance industry in the region has been slow to develop these products, mostly because they lack the necessary technical skills and capacity; high-level training helps develop these skills to create new and innovative index-based insurance products in the regional market, which in...

From April 17 to 20, the Strategic Alliance on Climate Risk Transfer Solutions facilitated two high-level executive training on index-based livestock insurance in Mombasa, Kenya. The goal was to reflect on the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program (KLIP) – a flagship program in agricultural insurance – and define next steps for further improvement and implementation on national and county level. The World Bank and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are also involved in the Program and the gained knowledge is openly shared for other programs and countries to use. The...

International experts and practitioners in climate and disaster assessment, risk management, and risk communication gathered on May 14-18, 2018 in Mexico City at the 2018 Understanding Risk Forum. Organized by the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) every two years, the event provides organizations and individuals with the opportunity to exchange knowledge, highlight new activities and initiatives, establish new partnerships, and foster innovation in the field. As part of this year’s program, the Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Program ( DRFIP ) and...