Singapore’s Asia Insurance Review honours MIA chairman David Dror

Microfinance Focus — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:30:22 +0000

Microfinance Focus, Nov. 16, 2009: As part of the Asia Insurance Industry Awards 2009, Prof. David Dror, Chairman of the Micro Insurance Academy (MIA), New Delhi has been honoured as “Personality of the Year” at a ceremony organized recently by the Asia Insurance Review in Singapore, “for his groundbreaking research and study which has helped boost understanding of how the world’s poorest communities can benefit from microinsurance”.
Professor Dror was given the award for his “tremendous, groundbreaking and visionary” contribution in the field of microinsurance research in India and Asia, said a statement.
During the annual ceremony which brings together the most prominent personalities and innovative companies in the mainstream of insurance and reinsurance worldwide, Prof. Dror was praised for a decade of dedication “to studying and designing innovative ways of boosting the acceptance of insurance in some of the world’s poorest communities.”
Prof. Dror is a proponent of micro health insurance with his conceptual framework on ways to link grassroots poor communities with reinsurance, called “Social Re”, described in “Social Re Insurance: A New Approach to Sustainable Community Health Financing, published in 2002 by the International Labour Organization and the World Bank. Over the last few years, Prof. Dror has published some 60 articles and was associated with the Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands), The French Centre of Studies and Research on the International Development, (CERDI), Clermont-Ferrand, France.
Prof. Dror is currently the founding chairman of MIA, specialising on microinsurance units in resource-poor communities. Asia Insurance Review is a professional regional magazine for insurance and re-insurance practitioners in the Asia-Pacific region.Related Posts:

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Microinsurance – The first option for the vulnerable to manage risks

Microfinance Focus — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:15:53 +0000

5th International Microinsurance Conference 2009

Microfinance Focus, Nov. 05, 2009: The 5th International Microinsurance Conference in Dakar, Senegal, has been taking place this week with the aim of unlocking the full potential of microinsurance by addressing the most challenging topics such as health, access and product design. Microinsurance has been growing and expanding rapidly in recent years throughout the world but especially in Africa, said Craig Churchill from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Chairman of the Microinsurance Network. “Over 14 million low-income people were covered by microinsurance at the end of 2008. Compared to a global landscape study conducted in 2005, this reflects more than an 80% increase for most African countries. This is substantial growth by any standard.”
The conference, organised by the Munich Re Foundation and the Microinsurance Network, involved nearly 400 microinsurance experts and practitioners who met to discuss trends and recent developments in cost-effective insurance for the poor. “With over 60 countries represented this year, the conference, held in Africa for the second time, is now truly the annual international meeting of microinsurance experts,” said Dirk Reinhard, Vice Chairman of the Munich Re Foundation and Chair of the conference organizing committee. “Experts usually think that Africa is the forgotten continent when it comes to economic development. But in the case of microinsurance, we are convinced that the conference participants will learn a lot from the experience in Africa, especially in the field of mutual health insurance.”
Microinsurance is facing many issues and one of them is the lack of reliable data. With this in mind the ILO’s Microinsurance Innovation Facility presented a new Landscape Study of Microinsurance in Africa. This study found that 14.7 million people living under $2 a day are covered by microinsurance in 32 African countries. This represents only about 2.6% of the population and differences among some African countries are quite significant. Senegal, for example, has just over 346,000 people covered (2% of the 14.7 million people covered on the African continent), while South Africa has 8.2 million (which represents 56%).
The study also found that Africa is dominated in terms of product by life insurance, while health insurance products cover only 1.9 million people. More positively, most of those covered enjoy comprehensive health packages with both in-patient and out-patient treatments. These packages, especially in Senegal, are predominantly delivered by health mutuals.
“Health is a key issue regarding human rights and development, and this is the reason it has been selected as a key topic for this conference. Senegal has interesting and promising approaches, especially in the area of mutuals,” said Thomas Loster, Chairman of the Munich Re Foundation. “With many new initiatives at this conference I hope to see the conference and microinsurance grow. I also hope that microinsurance will soon no longer be known as micro, but macro.”
Microinsurance is not without its challenges, as Charles Dan, Regional Director Africa, ILO, correctly pointed out: “Indeed, there are still a number of important conditions that need to be put in place to enable civil society, cooperatives, microfinance institutions, and insurance companies to live up to their potential to extend sustainable protection to the working poor.”
Prisca Soares, Secretary General of the African Insurance Organization (AIO) concluded: “We need to go beyond talking and take concrete action. I see two major challenges. The first is education, but not only for the population; the providers too need to have a deeper understanding of the target market. The second is innovation. We need to think outside of the box and look at the needs of each individual population group, know their culture and customs, and it’s only by doing this that we will be able to offer good−value microinsurance products.”Related Posts:

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Singapore’s Asia Insurance Review honours MIA chairman David Dror

Microinsurance – The first option for the vulnerable to manage risks