Latin America & the Caribbean

19
Jan
This post was originally produced during the GIIF Conference held in Paris at the OECD Headquarters. The 6 key lessons learnt that emerge from the panel are as follows: Insurance needs to be part of a value add package that generates higher income for the farmers Governments play a key role in creating markets for agricultural insurance. Experiences in Peru, India and Senegal point to government interventions such as premium support, risk financing, and linkage to credit. There is a need to design and offer the right insurance product. Area Yield Index Insurance may offer an adequate
24
Nov
Interview with Xavier Gine, Lead Economist within the World Bank Research Department (DEC). 1/ What do we know about index insurance after about 10 years of experience? There has been a lot of research around the question of take-up and impact of index insurance. Despite the potentially large welfare benefits, voluntary take-up of index insurance products has been rather limited so far. Explanations for this low demand could include: The first reason is that the product may be expensive, relative to the existing risk coping strategies. After all, when it is not subsidized as is the case for
Interview with Gloria Grandolini, F&M GP Senior Director, World Bank Group Over the last 10 years , our work at the World Bank Group (WBG) has led to over 35 million farmers benefiting from new or improved insurance products. The WBG recognizes the importance of making available financial solutions, particularly insurance instruments to compensate for losses following adverse natural events.
20
Jul
What happens when a major national development organization – GIZ and a leading private insurer – Allianz SE get together to build innovation in micro-insurance? Watch full video of the event here Experts presented key insights on micro-insurance with a larger view on how these lessons learnt can be applied to other inclusive insurance projects and to various other sectors. The 60 minute session showcased case-studies ranging from how GIZ has assisted Allianz in turning a corporate responsibility charitable micro-insurance story into a fully-fledged and profitable micro-insurance business
01
Apr
This map was created using data on rural loans. The GIS analysis shows where the density of loan amounts is higher (as opposed to where there are more individual loans). It is meant to highlight where the larger loans are concentrated. Notice that there are areas with many individual loans and low amount density. The methodology used to draw the map is as follows: The banks provided portfolio data with x/y coordinates in WGS84 format, which where projected and added to a basemap. Using the “point density” geographic analysis under the spatial analyst in ArcGIS 10.3, we derived a density of
Breaking the ICE: The Role of Insurance Associations in Insurance Consumer Education
In the last decade, some insurance associations (IAs) have expanded beyond their traditional core functions to develop insurance consumer education (ICE) programmes. Based on a review of the experiences of IAs in five countries, namely Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Mexico and South Africa, Microinsurance Paper #31 discusses the steps that should be taken during the preparation of an ICE. These include assigning responsibility internally, defining funding mechanisms, setting clear goals, defining the programme target and identifying partnership opportunities. It goes on to summarize key lessons for
Improving Access to Insurance for the Low-Income Population in Jamaica
Full publication available here Considering that the microinsurance market in Jamaica is a nascent one, in order to promote its development it is essential to: (i) confront the identified supervisory and regulatory obstacles in order to incentivise providers to offer microinsurance products responsibly; (ii) encourage providers to realise the potential of the microinsurance market to innovate and offer products with value; (iii) promote demand, (iv) but at the same time foster trust by protecting microinsurance consumers and making sure that they will be empowered to use the microinsurance
Climate Risk Forum 2014
Held as part of the New York City Climate Week, Climate Risk Forum 2014 is organized jointly by the World Bank Group's Global Index Insurance Facility and International Research Institute for Climate and Society. The event focuses on: Index insurance as a tool for Climate Risk Management; sc aling up index insurance and boosting private sector participation; and l ocal implementation and impact evaluation. View event highlights here.
Feasibility study for macro and meso-level index insurance - Jamaica
Jamaica faces a variety of natural hazards and, on a combined-hazard basis, is among the most vulnerable countries in the world . It lies in the center of the Atlantic hurricane belt, on a complex area of the northern Caribbean Plate margin, and is subject to tropical rainfall and erosion processes. Agriculture in Jamaica is vulnerable to various risks ranging from extreme winds, extreme rain and droughts . However, a large part of the agricultural sector, including large integrated supply chains as well as small farmers, is absorbing all the climate risks, without any risk out-transfer
Feasibility study for macro and meso-level index insurance - Dominican Republic
The recent path of Tropical Storm Isaac in September 2012 caused the destruction of plantain fields in the South Region. This situation forced the national authorities to provide in-kind assistance (i.e. planting materials, fertilizers, cleaning labor, land preparation) to the most affected farmers. Although some private insurers provide agriculture insurance, the Ministry of Agriculture does not have a pre-defined budget to tackle the negative effects caused by events in the agricultural sector while it faces significant contingent liabilities in this sector. The Ministry of Agriculture of