The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has released the draft Issues Paper on Index-based Insurances for a public consultation. Index-based insurance is increasingly looked at as a means to manage weather and catastrophic events, support food security and enhance access to insurance. The proposed Issues Paper provides background on this product, describes practices and actual examples and identifies related regulatory and supervisory issues and challenges. The draft paper and consultation tool are at this link. The consultation will end on 29 January 2018.

On the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Bonn this week, officials experimented with a game aimed at giving them a real-life flavor of the pressures to find the right response to worsening climate-related disasters, Thomson Reuters Foundation News reports. The game was invented by Pablo Suarez, a World Bank consultant in the Disaster Risk Financing & Insurance Program. Global Index Insurance Facility's Manager Fatou Assah was at the event. " The game 'gives you a sense of what’s at stake'," Ms. Assah said. “You can lose it all. If you’re the minister of finance you realize the money has

Geneva/Bonn, 13 October 2017: On the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction , the first-ever online database on climate risk insurance is being launched by the Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF), the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII), and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, commissioned by the German Government. The Climate Insurance database shares the experiences of numerous international organizations in the field of risk transfer and insurance solutions in the context of climate risk management and disseminates information on good

Washington, DC September 28, 2017 – The World Bank Group received EUR 10 million from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to improve and scale up the use of extreme weather insurance instruments as risk management tools for the poor and the most vulnerable smallholder farmers particularly affected by climate change. The contribution will finance knowledge and technical assistance activities of the Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) to build capacity and expertise among practitioners in developing countries to devise effective index insurance products

In a Business Mirror (Philippines) Op-ed, Dennis B. Funa, the Philippines's insurance commissioner, wrote that the Binhi Micro-Crop Insurance Program of CARD Pioneer Microinsurance Inc. will benefit smallholder farmers face typhoon risks. When leading portfolios of micro-finance institutions are protected by insurance, farmers are also protected. The Binhi Micro-Crop Insurance is supported by the Global Index Insurance Facility and the Government of Canada.

The World Bank has stated that the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program (KLIP), an index insurance that insures vulnerable pastoralists in the northern counties, has so far paid out about 5.3 million U.S dollars to over 20,000 pastoralists, according to a Xinhua report.

Rwanda is hosting the 4th Eastern and Southern Regional Conference on Microinsurance aimed at sharing insights on inclusive insurance business models and strategies, Rwanda's The New Times reports. National agricultural insurance schemes and weather index insurance pilots will be discussed as tools for making agricultural insurance accessible to smallholder farmers.

According to AllAfrica, Nigeria and Morocco have set up a steering committee, comprising representatives of the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation (NAIC), Bank of Agriculture, the Moroccan Agricultural Insurance Company (MAMDA), and MAMDA RE, to develop a sustainable crop insurance scheme for the countries.

Oliver Ralph and John Aglionby at the Financial Times wrote in The Big Read about how "insurance will help deliver relief more effectively". The authors cited several disaster risk insurance programs undertaken by development agencies and governments, including Kenya's Livestock Insurance Program.

Asia needs to explore index Insurance and parametric solutions in its efforts to close the region's protection gap, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Reinsurance News reports. “We must put in place mechanisms for the effective assessment, management, and transfer of disaster risks. Advances in technology, innovation, research, and market integration put us in a strong position to address these challenges,” Ravi Menon, MAS Managing Director, was quoted as saying.