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Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance will start selling insurance products that compensate farmers hit by drought in Indonesia as early as this fall, Asian Nikkei Review reports . With a premium of 50,000 rupiahs ($3.76), contract farmers will be entitled to be compensated 500,000 rupiahs if a drought occurs, the newspaper also details.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and specialist reinsurance company Reasuransi MAIPARK Indonesia have agreed to develop insurance products to help local farmers mitigate weather-related risks, Jakarta Globe reports . The agreement will establish insurance schemes that pay out benefits to farmers if a weather event exceeds levels in a predetermined index — which will measure rainfall levels, temperatures, wind speeds and crop yields, expected to provide cheaper and less complicated insurance benefits to farmers in the event of a natural disaster. "The region's changing climate has...
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and PT Reasuransi MAIPARK have agreed to jointly develop index-based insurance products to hedge risks against adverse weather events for agribusinesses, bank agriculture-loan portfolios, and farmer groups. The impacts and effects of adverse weather events—such as droughts, floods, and hurricanes—were felt during the most recent El Niño, when some of the worst hit agribusinesses reported up to 30 percent drops in projected yields. IFC will support MAIPARK—a special-risk reinsurance company—to work with local insurance companies to develop, sell, and...
Pacific Island countries will have better access to catastrophe insurance to reduce financial impacts in the aftermath of natural disasters, including major cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis, as a result of a new regional disaster risk finance project in Fiji, a World Bank's press release reports . The US$29.73 million project - PCRAFI: Furthering Disaster Risk Finance in the Pacific - builds on eight years of regional collaboration through the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Insurance Initiative (PCRAFI), and shared experiences from similar catastrophe risk pools supported by the...
A newly designed product detail brochure for Earthquake Index Insurance (EQII) is available for digital viewing. Since 2014, PT Reasuransi MAIPARK and GIIF have been developing EQII, a new insurance product that triggers an automatic payout based on pre-determined earthquake parameters. EQII is designed to protect the lending portfolios of banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs) from liquidity crises in the aftermath of an earthquake. The intended insured party of this product is a bank/MFI. Also available in Bahasa Indonesia .
Australian farmers who took up multi-peril crop insurance claim it helped them sleep at night, not worrying about a third failed harvest, ABC News reports . The Australian Government is working to support the development of a more diverse and mature agricultural insurance market, including multi-peril crop insurance, the report also adds.
In an interview with ABC News Australia , Jay Horton, an agribusiness consultant with Strategis Partners says only few Australian farmers subscribe to insurance despite the huge risk of growing a crop each year. Mr. Norton also notes that that while some companies in Australia offer multi-peril crop insurance (MPCI), even fewer offer index insurance. This situation contrasts the fact that "insurance reduces the likelihood that the company will have to raise costly external capital at the wrong time." Mr. Horton also urges better forms of risk management in the agricultural sector in Australia...

Earthquake Index Insurance (EQII) -- English Version

Supported by the Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF), the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has been working with PT Reasuransi MAIPARK (national reinsurer of all special risks) to design and retail an index insurance product that protects the lending portfolios of banks from liquidity crises in the aftermath of an earthquake. This is relevant particularly for microfinance institutions (MFIs) and rural banks to be able to continue lending to communities when funds are most needed. Bahasa Indonesia version is also available here . Klik di sini untuk v ersi Bahasa Indonesia.
On Chinadialogue.net, Zhang Chun, Senior Researcher at Chinadialogue, wrote that the Chinese government is pushing the insurance industry to offer climate risk policies, as climate changes increases the frequency and severity of typhoons. In the agricultural sector, the most relevant type of insurance policy related to climate change in China is called climate index insurance. Instead of determining pay-outs on the basis of damage and loss, policies are based on a weather index that sets compensation levels based on different weather conditions, such as rainfall," Zhang adds. Click here to...
Munich Re Foundation and Microinsurance Network have released a report that provides an insight on Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) as a distribution channel for microinsurance in Asia. " The study shows that there are an estimated 2.6 billion SIM cards activated through various carriers in the Asian region. Two Technical Service Providers (TSPs), BIMA and MicroEnsure, and eight MNOs which carry out distribution of Mobile Microinsurance (MMI) were identified in the region. The total number of lives covered, through these MNOs, stood at a total of 40.3 million by mid-2016, based on available...
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