This 2-part article focuses on rural women’s needs to access to insurance, and related research to better understand the importance of gender-responsive insurance products to mitigate women’s financial and health risks. In this Part, you will read about the current context with references to research and emerging trends. Part II will provide a deeper view of these trends in the agricultural insurance sector, with examples from the field. Worldwide, women represent an emerging customer segment for insurance with high growth potential, and there is an increasing interest among insurers and

The Partnership Forum is the annual meeting of the InsuResilience Global Partnership, bringing together all members and partners, from governments to representatives of international organizations, civil society, the private sector and academia. The Partnership Forum serves as platform to exchange experience and knowledge and to raise awareness about climate risk finance and insurance. As an active member in this Global Partnership, GIIF participated in this year’s forum together with its long-term implementation partner ACRE Africa. The event was held as a 4-day virtual event from 7-10

Women in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate, financial and health risks due to environmental, political and social factors. As a result, the insurance industry has long seen women as a high-risk consumer segment and overlooked this market that has a significant potential for economic and social development. Based on lessons learned and progress achieved with implementation partners over the past 10 years, the GIIF program acknowledges that by empowering women with insurance protection, both economic growth and long-term shared prosperity are attainable and sustainable

To understand the impact of COVID-19 on agriculture insurance operations, GIIF conducted a survey with 11 of its implementing partners in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Due to the pandemic, the general feedback on policy renewal and new business generation for the agriculture business line offers a concerning outlook. Many expect a decrease in farmer enrollment due to diminishing disposable income and travel restrictions affecting field visits and in-person product awareness workshops. Likewise, limited mobility for project monitoring teams, crop cut specialists and aggregators as well as delays

Since our April blog, more field reports and anecdotal evidence have emerged to gain a more holistic picture of the COVID-19 impact on smallholder farmers. The spillover effects of this health crisis are unprecedented, spreading across all sectors with major damages to food systems, transportation, trade and tourism as well as altering businesses and daily lives around the world through control measures. In our work, we also see farmers suffering economic impact from business shutdown, movement constraints and supply chain disruption. For example, inputs/animal feed are not available or become

GIIF: In order to provide an introduction to our readers, could you please share with us the main priority areas of the InsuResilience Global Partnership and the activities under its Working Groups? Dr. Zwick: Launched at the COP23 in November 2017, the InsuResilience Global Partnership has the vision, to strengthen the resilience of developing countries and to protect the lives and livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people from the impacts of disasters by promoting the adoption and use of climate and disaster risk finance and insurance (CDRFI) solutions and approaches towards faster, more

At the time of writing, disruptions on food production, agricultural supply chains and markets have not been materialized; however, the pandemic is directly affecting food systems through impact on food supply and demand, and indirectly through decreases in purchasing power as well as logistical barriers and trade blockages. Learning from past pandemic, for instance during the 2014 Ebola crisis, lockdowns in West Africa had several negative impacts on farmers’ livelihoods including curbing access to markets both for input purchase and produce sale as well as reducing the availability of

With the outbreak yet to be contained, the COVID-19 crisis is steadily amassing damages across various sectors such as health, transportation, trade, tourism, to name a few. While the impact/pressure to agriculture sector is less pronounced, disruption in the value chains has been observed in dynamics of food supply and demand in conjunction of reducing purchasing power, logistical barriers and trade blockages. With the start of typhoon, monsoon and hurricane season in different parts of the world as well as weather uncertainty in the upcoming crop seasons in arid and semi-arid regions