Product distribution

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.
Pranav Prashad, Technical Officer at International Labour Organization's Impact Insurance Facility talks about demand for index insurance. This video was shot at the Agriculture Insurance Conference in Berlin 2014.
Jean-Luc Perron, Managing Director of Grameen Credit Agricole Microfinance talks about defining and growing the market for index insurance.
Parametric Insurance: A hopeful vision coming to life
Despite representing only a small portion of the total Property & Casualty market, parametric insurance has evolved rapidly in the last decade. This relatively new approach to insurance is index-based. At AXA, we believe that parametric insurance will continue to flourish in the future. Despite representing only a small portion of the total Property & Casualty market, parametric insurance has evolved rapidly in the last decade. This relatively new approach to insurance is index-based. For instance, in some geographies, claims could be paid out based on actual meteorological conditions measured
Climate Corporation Builds Massive Data Platform for Agriculture in the US
According to The Climate Corporation – a tech company based in San Francisco -- data science has the potential to fundamentally improve the productivity and sustainability of global agriculture. Since 2007, the Climate Corporation has been hard at work building a technology platform that combines hyper-local weather monitoring, agronomic data modeling, and high-resolution weather simulations that are updated hourly. On the platform (see www.climate.com), Climate has built products to protect farmers with index-based insurance and improve profits with software that help farmers make more
Can Weather Index Insurance Increase Finance for Smallholder Farmers?
Smallholder farmers need finance. According to a recent report of 1,800 banks conducted by the Initiative for Smallholder Finance – “ Local Bank Financing for Smallholder Farmers: A $9 Billion Drop in the Ocean ” - local banks in developing countries are currently lending approximately $9 billion to smallholder farmers compared to a total estimated demand of $300 billion globally for smallholder finance ($450 billion if China is included) . Although smallholder farmer financing also occurs through MFIs and non- financial intermediaries like supply chain participants, cooperatives and
Interview with Benjamin Collier, Research Fellow at the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center
Collier argues that index insurance is best suited to cover disasters which occur every 20 years or greater because severe risks lower premium costs. Below are excerpts form the interview. Q: You have done substantial research, notably with Jerry Skees on index insurance. Why do you think that index insurance needs to be designed as “disaster insurance” rather than “crop insurance”? A: We need a new frame of reference for household markets. Up to now, the consensus focus has been crop yields. Yet the effects of bad weather on household well-being are often multifaceted and poorly captured by
IFC Agri-Insurance Expert Gary Reusche on Public Private Partnerships and Portfolio Approach
Farmers know that there will be years when the crop yields are reduced, or prices will be low. Perhaps they will diversify their crops, depend on livestock, or purchase a system to irrigate their crops. All these are ways to mitigate and reduce their risks. When there is no insurance culture or trust in insurance companies -and insurance companies themselves may not have extensive experience selling agricultural insurance - there is understandably little interest to purchase crop insurance. In such cases, it is the government who is the de facto insurer because crop losses of more than 50
World Bank Group-Led Community of Index-Insurance Practitioners to Enhance Exchange of Knowledge, Expertise
BERLIN, November 27, 2014—The Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF), an innovative program managed by the World Bank Group, launched today the Index Insurance Forum at the Agricultural Insurance Conference in Berlin. The Index Insurance Forum will serve as a unique forum for knowledge sharing and exchange of best practices among index-insurance practitioners and industry representatives.
Interview with Peer Stein: Index Insurance Is For Farmers What Credit Scoring Was For Consumer and Small Bank Lending
Is index insurance poised for a great leap forward similar to the rapid growth experienced by microfinance and credit bureaus in the 1990s? Index insurance clearly holds a lot of promise to help unlock productivity gains and protect farmers all around the world. Index insurance is for insuring farmers, MSMEs and individuals what credit scoring was for consumer and small business lending - a huge opportunity to make financial services much more widely available at lower cost by using smart analytics and data. In this sense, index insurance may be even more promising than microcredit because the