Trying to understand the demand for microinsurance

Abstract

No abstract

Entrepreunership and Micro-Finance in Extreme Poverty Circumstances — Challenges and Prospects: The Case of Zimbabwe

“…The first MFIs were non-profit organizations, with a social mission to alleviate poverty by helping the poor develop vocational and business management skills and by giving them small and uncollateralized loans as working capital (Armendariz et al, 2005;Churchill, 2002;Fernando, 2006b;Jackson and Islam, 2005;Ullah and Routray, 2007). From this modest yet revolutionary beginning in South Asia and Latin America in the 1970s, microfinance now encompasses 10,000 charitable organizations and regulated financial organizations across the globe, which offer a burgeoning array of credit, savings, housing finance, remittance and insurance products to the base of the pyramid (CGAP, 2007).…”

Weather index insurance for managing drought risk in smallholder agriculture: lessons and policy implications for sub-Saharan Africa

“…However, refining rainfall-based insurance indices, using multiple weather stations instead of one station to represent a particular target area (Gommes and Gobel 2013), and investing in automatic rainfall stations (infrastructure) for developing countries, possibly through external support (Leftley 2009;Sarris 2013a), are some of the issues that need policy attention and public-private partnerships (Mills 2007), to mitigate the impact of weather-based agricultural risks in the low income world. It is necessary to acknowledge that weather index insurance should be considered a promising addition to the portfolio of risk management options in developing countries, instead of considering it the only solution for all weather-based risks faced by resource-poor producers (Churchill 2002). Furthermore, weather risk is just one -albeit a major -risk that confronts smallholders in developing countries.…”

“…mobile phone discussed earlier) that may also help to further reduce interest rates and insurance premiums. If credit is insured (either by directly paying part of the input cost as insurance premium or insuring agricultural output through weather index insurance), lenders will be less reluctant to enter into the rural financial markets (Shee and Turvey 2012;Carter 2009;Churchill 2002;Mahul 2001;Barnett et al 2008). The findings from Shee and Turvey (2012) specifically showed the benefits of adding insurance risk premiums to base loan interest rates, thus avoiding the need to purchase the insurance up front, which is one of the key problems of cash constrained farmers.…”

Microfinance, EU Structural Funds and Capacity Building for Managing Authorities

“…Its analysis covers different areas, from the examination of operational solutions aimed at starting and/or developing microinsurance programmes (Churchill, 2007) to the acknowledgment of the prominent role played by microinsurance in providing, along with other microfinance products and solutions, complete management solutions for different types of risks faced by individuals and companies alike (Arun and Bendig, 2010), up to the analysis of the ethical objectives pursued by such initiatives (Radermacher and Brinkmann, 2011). However, while taking into consideration a variety of aspects, including, in particular, regulatory issues (Biener et al, 2014;IAIS, 2007IAIS, , 2010IAIS, , 2012Chatterjee, 2012), demand/supply dynamics Liu et al, 2013;Arun et al, 2012;Dercon et al, 2012;De Bock and Gelade, 2012;Arun and Bendig, 2010;Cohen et al, 2005;Churchill et al, 2003;Churchill, 2002), the distribution channels of microinsurance products and the variety of contractual forms offered (Sheth, 2014;Prashad et al, 2013;Clarke and Dercon, 2009), the common thread that holds together the numerous contributions developed over the years is represented by the fact that all such microinsurance programmes were developed and implemented in developing countries; no traces are found of similar experiences in more "advanced and developed" socioeconomic systems. Since the primary objective of this study is precisely to reduce the "information gap" before addressing the problem of how to apply the aforementioned microinsurance programmes to advanced economies, the first necessary step is to analyse the scope of this particular form of insurance.…”