The Global Index Insurance Facility together with the ILO's Impact Insurance Facility, USAID and BASIS/I4-sponsored Global Action Network (GAN), organised a webinar to look into the question "How can index insurance be bundled with other financial and non financial services". This webinar featured speakers from global organizations who shared experiences and discussed which services and activities in the agriculture value chain are most aligned for bundling. It explored mechanisms and issues in bundling, and also looked into the possible impact of bundling on pricing & off-take of index

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

Can you give us some examples of key trade-offs that you have faced when providing technical support to the overarching policy discussion on regulation of index insurance in Kenya? The first trade-off that we have faced was in the definition of insurable interest. In the law of insurance, the insured must have an interest in the subject matter of his or her policy, or such policy will be regarded as a form of gambling. However, in Kenya most farmers do not own their land as they work on communal farms or as wage laborers. We therefore decided in our policy framework to define the insurable

What do you think of the upcoming index insurance regulation in Kenya? Well, at this stage, I think we have drafted a policy paper which sets guidelines for the future regulations , however I believe that we have here an opportunity to enhance access to insurance in Kenya. What are the expected benefits? One of the key expected benefits is the creation of a consumer protection framework. This means that index insurance products will need to be explained very clearly and in a simple way, and all the contract terms (ex: triggers, reference weather stations, index design etc...) will have to be

“ I did not believe in crop insurance before, but now it is a reality for me”! It is with great enthusiasm that 38-year old maize farmer Bessekourou Issiaka from Northern Benin received the first payout on his weather insurance policy. Because of the lack of rain this season, some of his maize fields generated less than half of their usual yield, or 800 kg/ha instead of the usual 2000 kg/ha. He is therefore quite relieved to receive FCFA 90,000, about 180 dollar insurance payout which will help him repay the loan he took to purchase inputs for the maize production. Bessekourou Issiaka is one

Insurers are trying to control costs and reach scale in agriculture insurance by designing meso-level insurance policies that cover large numbers of farmers associated with an aggregator (e.g. agribusiness firm, financial institution, input providers). Products are priced using a portfolio pricing model, meaning that the price is calculated on the basis of the whole group. This avoids the cost of assessing individual plots.A project in Mozambique supported by GIIF and implemented by reinsurance broker, Guy Carpenter, used a meso-level approach to cover cotton farmers through a public-private

“ We’re all Senegalese, and we should all have access to insurance” says Yoro POULO BA, a groundnut farmer from Ndoffane, a commune from the center of Senegal who just received insurance payouts as part of the GIIF-supported index insurance project. This year, the rains during the month of July - the sowing period for groundnut - were extremely low, therefore triggering automatic payouts for what is called “sowing failure”. The payouts that he has received amount to about 30% of the total insured amount, which is the amount of credit that he has borrowed for seeds and fertilizers needed for