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Jeanna Holtz, the Facility Sr. Grant Officer, visited India for 2 weeks in July. She made a series of visits not only to our three Round 1 grantees located in the region (ICICI Prudential, Medilink and Center for Insurance and Risk Management CIRM) but also to several organizations active in the microinsurance sector.
ICICI Prudential organized a visit to the site where the Facility’s grant will support a savings and life insurance product for tea workers, administered by tea estates in the state of Assam. Jeanna and colleagues from ICICI Prudential and CIRM met with the workers to better understand how, these families manage their daily subsistence, their working conditions in the fields and in the processing plant, and their needs and coping strategies to manage risk. They also met with management of tea plantations to review the role of the tea estate to distribute the products. Finally, a NGO, Assam Community Health & Advancement Initiative in India (CHAI), which supports enterprise initiatives with residents of tea estates and neighbouring communities, was consulted for ideas to develop relevant products and communications for the proposed client group.
Another meeting was held in Kolkata with Medilink to see first hand its innovative claims and medical management system. This system is presently being utilized in India to serve low-income and commercial clients, and will support the third party administration services that Medilink plans to introduce in Ghana, with support from an innovation grant.
We hope to build a pipeline for future grantees coming from India, one of the most dynamic countries for microinsurance innovation and, as part of an overall goal to encourage further applications for innovation grants and to describe the Facility’s activities, Jeanna met with a number of organizations that are active in or are making plans to become active in microinsurance. These organizations include:
In such a short period of time it was not possible to meet with all Indian organizations doing interesting work in Microinsurance but the Facility learned a lot from seeing directly the environments and the challenges of this sector in India. The Facility will definitely need to spend more time on the field in the future.
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