For several years, insuring harvests against the climate hazards that regularly destroy farmers’ crops in developing countries has for several years been a major tool in the fight against poverty, mainly in Africa and Asia, where between 400 and 500 million farmers survive on very low incomes. At the Convergences World Forum in Paris on 9 September 2015, Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and GIIF speak about the innovations in index insurance and the success of the Kilimo Salama project in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania. Expanded in 2014, the program develops and offers insurance for

Peter Gross, Regional Director in Africa with MicroEnsure, talks to Bank Innovation online magazine about how MicroEnsure is providing micro-insurance to 15 million people in 17 countries in Africa and Asia. He explains that the reason for the poor uptake of insurance in these mass market economies can be boiled down to 4 factors: cost, trust (or lack of it), access (or lack of it), and understading (or lack of it). Click here to read the full interview.

One of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, Swiss Re, recently announced that two million African smallholder farmers are now protected against drought, floods and other natural perils, thanks to the efforts of the World Bank and Swiss Re Corporate Solutions.Back in 2012, Michel Lies, Swiss Re’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) made a commitment that by 2017 it would protect 1.4 million African smallholder farmers from weather and catastrophe risks, through increased insurance protection. And now the Switzerland-based reinsurer has revealed that not only has the amount of farmers covered

International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Green Delta Insurance Company Ltd yesterday entered into an agreement to develop insurance products for farmers to protect them from weather-related losses. Advisory support will be provided for distributing the products, increasing lending to farmers and improving their risk profile. Kyle F Kelhofer, country manager of IFC, and Farzana Chowdhury, managing director of Green Delta, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organisations, according to a statement. “Crop insurance will protect rural economy. Weather-index insurance will help

In New Delhi: Minakshi Seth Phone: +91 11 4111 1000 E-mail: MSeth@ifc.org In Dhaka: Towheed Feroze Phone: +88 028833755 E-mail: TFeroze@ifc.org Dhaka, Bangladesh, February 24, 2015 – IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has signed an agreement with Bangladesh’s leading private insurer Green Delta Insurance to develop insurance products for individual farmers, agribusinesses, and financial institutions lending to farmers for protection from weather-related risks such as drought, excess rain, and cyclones. IFC will assist Green Delta, an IFC equity client, to develop insurance products that

Despite significant efforts made towards greater food security in the last decade, there remain millions of poor people in developing nations who suffer from chronic hunger. Boosting agricultural output is critical to mitigating this enormous development challenge. In recent years index-insurance has emerged as a widely recognized and powerful innovative tool that can help farmers manage financial losses arising from climate change and natural disasters. The World Bank Group’s Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF), a multi-donor trust fund established in 2009, supports the development and

Geneva, Switzerland July 24, 2014 – The International Labour Office (ILO) and the World Bank Group (WBG) have signed a memorandum of understanding that aims to provide access to improved insurance products to hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers, small businesses and individuals in Asia and Africa. The three year partnership is the first-of-its-kind within the rapidly evolving index insurance industry. The Facility and GIIF combine their strengths to improve the delivery of index insurance to farmers and their families as well as businesses, through extraction, dissemination and

BERLIN, November 27, 2014—The Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF), an innovative program managed by the World Bank Group, launched today the Index Insurance Forum at the Agricultural Insurance Conference in Berlin. The Index Insurance Forum will serve as a unique forum for knowledge sharing and exchange of best practices among index-insurance practitioners and industry representatives.

IFC will work with the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development Insurance Agency and the Pioneer Insurance and Surety Corporation to design new insurance products that aim to protect Filipino farmers against typhoon-related losses, which are estimated to have exceeded $2.5 billion since 2009. According to the 2012 World Disaster Report, the Philippines ranks as the third most disaster-prone country in the world, with an average of 20 typhoons per year. The project will enable CARD Insurance and Pioneer Insurance to offer indemnity insurance to thousands of farmers and rural entrepreneurs

Farmers know that there will be years when the crop yields are reduced, or prices will be low. Perhaps they will diversify their crops, depend on livestock, or purchase a system to irrigate their crops. All these are ways to mitigate and reduce their risks. When there is no insurance culture or trust in insurance companies -and insurance companies themselves may not have extensive experience selling agricultural insurance - there is understandably little interest to purchase crop insurance. In such cases, it is the government who is the de facto insurer because crop losses of more than 50