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Legal and Regulatory Work for 14 countries in Francophone Africa - CIMA (Regional Insurance Industry Body)

In 2011, at the request of CIMA and FANAF, a regional study on microinsurance was conducted with the technical assistance and financial support from the World Bank. This report showed that a new regional framework was required for microinsurance and agricultural index-based insurance, which had been absent, in the CIMA zone. The member countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo.



Project type:

Legal and Regulatory work

Requesting Agency:

CIMA (Conférence Interafricaine des Marchés d'Assurances): Regional body of the insurance industry for 14 countries in Francophone Africa.

Key achievements:
  • The assistance to CIMA in the drafting of the required amendments of the current regulation to allow for the promotion of microinsurance and the commercialization of agricultural index based insurance products.
  • The adoption of the revised document of the CIMA code, CIMA Book 7, in April 2012 which permitted the practice of microinsurance operations, including index insurance in the CIMA zone.
  • The ratification of the new regulation by the 14 Finance Ministers of the CFA Franc zone, which in June 2012 made the CIMA Book 7 an integral component of the CIMA Code.  A moratorium of one year was set for all insurance companies to conform to the new regulation by June 2013.
  • Two pilot countries were selected to conduct full scale implementations of the regulation in the CIMA zone. (See details under Benin and Senegal)
  • A first self-help technical support has been provided on CIMA Book 7 in April 2013 in Libreville (Gabon) by the International Insurance Institute of Yaoundé (Cameroon) to train executive staff of all national insurance regulatory authorities of the CIMA insurance market on the topic: “License and Control of MI companies".
 
Key stakeholders:

FANAF (Fédération des Sociétés d’Assurances de droit National Africaines which regroups all insurance companies and intermediaries operating in the CFA franc zone) Direction des Assurances of Senegal, ILO, UNCDF, WB/IBRD-GIIF, and CNAAS

Contacts:

Fatou Assah
Program Manager
World Bank group
Tel: + 1 202 473 6160
Fassah@worldbank.org