China Weather Index Insurance Project

The China Weather Index Insurance Project (China WII), supported by the British Embassy Beijing, aims to create markets of digital insurance in rural areas by engaging public-private stakeholders. The project partners with policymakers, insurance companies, financial institutions, and insurance-tech players to introduce digital technology-empowered insurances, such as Weather Index Insurance (WII) across the country over the next three years.

Despite the COVID disruption, efforts are being made in market landscape studies and insurance product development. In 2020, five entities have received advisories from IFC, and eight new products were developed for two provinces in China. Ten workshops/webinars/events were held in person or virtually reaching over 330 participants accumulatively.

▪ In Hebei Province, 7,754 insurance policies were sold across five counties and 72 percent of beneficiaries are women. This has covered about 5,700 acres/23 km2 of cash crops such as potatoes, apples, grapes, and wheat.

▪ In Gansu Province, through the advocacy efforts by the China WII, the Provincial Government issued its 2021-2023 Agri-Insurance Implementation Plan, which specifically mentions "steadily promoting the new type of index insurance".

The project also elevates its strategy from "product piloting" at inception to "creating markets" as of now. The four strategic pillars of this new strategy are climate change adaptation, tech-enabled innovations, policy advocacy, and international knowledge transfer.

Find more information about China WII, please download the China WII brochure here. 

Digital Insurance and Rural Revitalization Forum

The Digital Insurance and Rural Revitalization Forum ("Forum") is a virtual community initiated by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the British Embassy in China through the China WII Project and operated by the China Academy of Inclusive Finance (CAFI), which aims to build a knowledge hub for index agri-insurance. By inviting leading market players and experts to share first-hand insights and case studies, it will further promote capacity-building and actionable innovations in digital insurance, improve modernized agricultural risk management, and drive a climate-smart village revitalization.

On November 9, 2020, the idea of Forum, as a knowledge hub, was soft-launched when IFC and CAFI co-hosted the China WII Seminar that attracted more than 50 thought leaders and/or practitioners from governments, financial institutions, and academia. Since then, the Forum brings together insurance companies, rural banks/microfinance companies, climate-smart agriculture companies, insure-tech players, research institutions, and international organizations. On April 1, 2021, the Forum officially launched its online portal located at CAFI's official website and WeChat account to share market research insights, case studies, first-hand practices, as well as training or event information on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. It is expected to increase readers' attention to insurance, especially agricultural insurance and digital insurance, raise awareness of climate risk to the agricultural sector and related risk mitigation measures, and facilitate the dialogues and implementations of green transformation in the agricultural insurance sector.