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Housed at the International Labour Organization’s Social Finance Programme, the Microinsurance Innovation Facility seeks to increase the availability of quality insurance for the developing world’s low-income families to help them guard against risk and overcome poverty. The Facility was launched in 2008 with the support of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Innovation grants
Over a 5-year period ending in 2012 the ILO’s Facility will provide 40 to 50 innovation grants, totaling US$18 million through biannual requests for applications. The grants can support insurance against any type of risk, but priority is given to products where demand exceeds supply, such as agriculture, health, life and property.
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Innovation Grantees
Through the innovation grants, the Facility is encouraging a variety of organizations to engage with microinsurance in order to experiment with new products or partnerships. Click on this section to get an overview of our grantees, the projects they are implementing, and how these are intended to benefit the working poor.
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What's new
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, has just come back from Cambodia where she assisted the
Sky Health Insurance Program implemented by GRET.
Jose Navarro is also an actuary and comes from the commercial sector. 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.
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
Through a variety of mechanisms - including action research with the Innovation grantees, impact and thematic studies, small research grants – the Facility will strive to understand under which circumstances microinsurance schemes work, how they can contribute to reduce the vulnerability of low income workers 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, recently co-organised 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). The three main themes discussed were 1) the role of technology in microinsurance to increase efficiency and outreach, 2) the role of policy makers in creating an enabling environment and 3) the current trends and products.
more >
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Feature story
Peru: Microinsurance paves the way for social protection in rural areas
A large insurance firm and an association of water irrigation users have teamed up to become the first providers of micro-life insurance for millions of small farmers in Peru. The project, which has received support from the ILO’s Microinsurance Innovation Facility and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will allow a third of rural families in Peru to have access to social protection for the first time. ILO reports from Lima.
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