News

October 2008

• New staff join the Facility
  In October, two new staff members joined the Facility to contribute to the expansion of our activities. Caroline Phily, an actuary who also has a degree in Development Studies, worked for a couple of years in the microinsurance sector in Cambodia where she assisted the Sky Health Insurance Program implemented by GRET.
  Jose Navarro is also an actuary and has an advanced degree in Financial Risk Management. He has an extensive experience in life and health insurance and finance projects, has worked for Swiss Reinsurance, Munich Re and Allianz. Jose will be the Facility’s focal point for Latin America. To get more details, check the details of their bios.
• Technical assistance Grants
  Microinsurers are often in need of valuable expertise to launch a new scheme or improve their products. The Facility offers Technical assistance grants to help launch or improve products, upgrade operations, meet legal requirements or obtain reinsurance, conduct market research or price products. The TA grant covers the cost of the expertise required to perform these tasks through short-term assignments.
• The Facility releases its research strategy
  In a nutshell, we will strive through a variety of mechanisms (action research with the Innovation grantees, impact and thematic studies, grant to Southern academics…) to understand under which circumstances Microinsurance schemes work, how they can contribute to reduce low income workers vulnerability and how they can become a profitable activity. Download the research strategy - (pdf 631 Kb).
• Research grants are now available
  The Facility is opening the first Research grants round for academics mostly in developing countries. The research grants aim to respond to the Facility’s research agenda and intend to promote microinsurance in academic circles. The deadline for submissions is January 29, 2009.
• Better interaction to promote microinsurance in India
  CIRM, one of our Innovation grantees, co-organised recently a one day Microinsurance round table on regulation, technology and trends in India called Indian Microinsurance – What works? The goal of the meeting was to promote interaction between key microfinance stakeholders (policy makers, Microinsurance providers/intermediaries and technology enablers). Three main themes have been discussed (the role of Technology in Microinsurance to increase efficiency and outreach, the role of policy makers in creating an enabling environment and the current trends and products). You can watch the sessions.

September 2008

• Online course on Innovative Market-based Risk Management Framework
  This course lays out a conceptual basis for innovative schemes designed to manage risks associated with rural poor in low income countries. It introduces participants to a market-based risk management approach for correlated risks affecting the agricultural sector such as weather risk and commodity price risk.
• Sharing information with the mutual and cooperative sector
  Mary Yang, the Facility’s technical expertise officer just attended the ICMIF the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF) Development Workshop, a great forum for exchanging ideas, experiences.
• The Facility visits projects India
  Jeanna Holtz, the Facility Sr. Grant Officer, visited India for 2 weeks and met not only our three Round 1 grantees located in the region (ICICI Prudential and Centre for Insurance and Risk Management CIRM) but also several organizations active in the microinsurance sector.

August 2008

• Microinsurance Conference 2008
  From 5 to 7 November 2008, the Microinsurance Conference 2008 will take place in Cartagena, Colombia.
• TA experts
  A priority for the ILO’s Facility is to increase the supply and quality of technical assistance (TA) by identifying existing TA experts and nurturing the development of new ones through training, fellowships and mentoring.
• Research Partner
  The Facility launches a partnership with European Development Research Network (EUDN) to collaborate on research in order to better understand how insurance can help reduce vulnerability among the low income households in developing countries.