Previously published here on the World Bank Group's Private Sector Development Blog How governments can ensure that low-income farmers are financially protected against natural disasters, such as droughts, was at the heart of a panel discussion at the “ Global Index Insurance Conference ,” which concluded earlier this week in Paris. The panelists explored various options, such as the disaster reserve fund FONDEN in Mexico as well as three index-based insurance programs aiming to protect vulnerable farmers: the African Risk Capacity , the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program, and the Mexican

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

Having many Sri Lankan friends in my home country of Australia, I have always wanted to visit Sri Lanka. The image of beautiful green tea plantations comes to mind, and perhaps rightfully so. This May, I had the opportunity to visit and understand more about their Index Insurance market through the Index Insurance Forum – a community of practitioners working towards market development and scalability in Index Insurance. The visit was part of a peer exchange with SANASA, an insurance company in Sri Lanka and a partner of the World Bank Group’s Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF). The

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

Last week, the United Nations’s Secretary General - Ban Ki-Moon, welcomed over 200 insurance representatives at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York for the 17-June UN Insurance Forum. During his inspiring speech, Ban Ki-Moon remarked that this was the first time that a UN Secretary General has ever met a congregation of global insurance leaders. He stressed that this was by no means a chance encounter and called upon the insurance industry to play a strong role in the quest for a more sustainable post-2015 world. He stressed that insurers should invest wisely into sustainable

SEPTEMBER 14 and 15, OECD Headquarters, PARIS Climate risk and its impact has been an issue of key significance for the insurance industry. Risks are outlined for all eco-systems, societies, economies, industries and agriculture. Is Index Insurance the Solution? Index insurance is an innovative financial instrument to help poor smallholder farmers manage the increasing climate risks to their harvests. Index insurance will allow farmers to survive adverse weather or destroyed harvests and potentially open up agri-credit markets; enabling farmers to protect their assets and invest in their farms

“ 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