International Labour Office, World Bank to Enhance Access to Insurance in Africa and Asia

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The International Labour Office (ILO) and the World Bank Group (WBG) have signed a memorandum of understanding that aims to provide access to improved insurance products to hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers, small businesses and individuals in Asia and Africa.

The international labour body said in a statement that the three-year partnership is the first of its kind within the rapidly evolving index insurance industry.

The Facility and GIIF, it added combine their strengths to improve the delivery of index insurance to farmers and their families as well as businesses, through extraction, dissemination and promotion of lessons coming from grantees supported by the GIIF and to strengthen microinsurance markets in countries where GIIF operates.

“The ILO’s Facility is a knowledge hub for inclusive insurance, and we are excited to leverage our expertise in research and capacity building to improve index insurance in collaboration with GIIF.

“With the improved availability of quality insurance, low-income people will increase their resilience to risk, enabling them to adopt improved production processes to help break the poverty cycle of low investment and low returns,“ said Team Leader of the Facility, Craig Churchill.

As part of the partnership, the Facility will bring the GIIF partners into a community of practice that will provide a venue for knowledge sharing and experience exchange.

Publications and interactive events, the ILO explained, will be used to capture and share the latest knowledge of good practices and successful strategies in making index insurance work. To ensure that insurance is valuable for beneficiaries, a series of capacity building interventions and consumer awareness events are also lined up in five countries in Africa and Asia.

“GIIF is pleased to further extend its commitment to the use of index insurance as a prudent and necessary risk management tool for agriculture, food security and disaster risk reduction.

Source: This Day Live (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Health Care, Impact Assessment
Tags
financial inclusion, microfinance