Microfinance News » microinsurance

Microinsurance essential for Financial Inclusion – Pranab Mukherjee

Microfinance Focus — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:25:25 +0000

Microfinance Focus, Sep 2, 2010: Addressing a gathering at the Global Insurance Summit organized by ASSOCHAM in Mumbai on Wednesday, Union Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee stressed on the need of popularizing Microinsurance for achieving financial inclusion in the country.

Identifying financial inclusion as one of the biggest challenges for the Indian insurance market, he said, “One of the important challenges before the insurance industry today is to generate the required level of awareness about the benefits of insurance to our people particularly living in semi-urban and rural areas”.

Acknowledging the fact that insurance companies are now increasingly tapping the semi-urban and rural areas to spread the message of protection of life and property through insurance cover, Mr. Mukherjee said, “One of the main objectives of promoting financial inclusion packages is to economically empower those sections of society which are otherwise denied access to financial services, by providing banking and credit services thereby focusing on bridging the rural credit gap.”

He further stressed that lack of protective elements may not serve the objective of promoting financial inclusion packages as the targeted section may fall back into the clutches of poverty in the event of unforeseen contingencies. Hence, to provide a hedge against these unforeseen risks, popularization of micro insurance is one of the essential ingredients of financial inclusion package.

Drawing attention to the miniscule population of India which is covered under health insurance, the Finance Minister asked the insurers to ensure further penetration of the health insurance in this country with a simultaneous consideration that the premiums are affordable for the insured.

“There is immense need of disaster management in controlling catastrophic risk in India. The insurance industry should prepare to deal with any kind of catastrophic losses. The insurance companies should concentrate on exploring the world reinsurance market, so that the impact of heavy losses can be mitigated”, he added.Related Posts:

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ADB provides $750,000 grant for Microinsurance development in China & Mongolia

Microfinance Focus — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:02:09 +0000

Microfinance Focus, Sep 1, 2010: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing a two-year $750,000 grant from the ADB-administered Regional Cooperation and Integration Fund to examine market supply and demand for microinsurance in People’s Republic of China and Mongolia. The grant will address policy, regulatory and institutional barriers in the region’s Microinsurance sector.

ADB will work with the Access to Insurance Initiative (A2II), a global program launched in 2009 with the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) – the international standard setting body for insurance regulation and supervision. The Initiative seeks to link development agencies and industry supervisors to promote expanded insurance services to the poor worldwide.

A Memorandum of Agreement has been signed under which the German development agency and secretariat of the initiative, GTZ, will provide co-financing of about $178,000 and will engage in and support work agreed with ADB and A2II. The ADB, A2II, and GTZ teams will work with the Chinese Insurance Regulatory Commission and Mongolia Financial Regulatory Commission.

“Our agreement with GTZ makes us the first international financial institution to effectively buy into the Access to Insurance Initiative to expand its work into specific countries, and we are providing significant resources to help regulators and insurance companies better understand and promote the responsible growth of microinsurance,” said Betty Wilkinson, Senior Finance Specialist in the East Asia Department.Related Posts:

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Microinsurance product ImpelCARE wins NASSCOM’s AppFAME Contest

Microfinance Focus — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 05:37:21 +0000

Microfinance Focus, Aug 24, 2010: PK4 Software Technologies, a Bangalore based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM company has been selected as a winner in NASSCOM’s AppFAME Contest for its hand-held rural healthcare and microinsurance application ‘ImpelCARE’.

Winning in the enterprise app category this hand-held-based tele-medicine and microinsurance application is administered by Village Health Champions (VHCs) – women from local villages who are familiar with customs and people have been trained to use its simple local-language interface, while doctors and clinicians use either an English version of the same thing or a deeper web-based SaaS equivalent.

The hand-held device helps VHCs track patient info, provide primary healthcare, record vital statistics and deliver health-related products. The built-in Clinical Decision Support System delivers appropriate medical advice, prescriptions and, where it cannot, direction to invoke tele-medicine.

Working with CARE Foundation and other stakeholders, ImpelCARE uses technological innovation to provide high-quality healthcare services to patients in remote villages, simultaneously keeping costs low. The VHC can interact with a remote CARE doctor who can recommend treatment through an SMS prescription. The VHC also collects microinsurance premiums and records them on the hand-held terminal.

The AppFAME Contest is a special attraction at this year’s NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Conclave, to be held on August 25th 2010 in New Delhi. For the first time, NASSCOM and IAMAI invited applications from Mobile App Developers and rated them on various parameters like usability, design, market potential and application. This was an attempt to seek out apps that are likely to define the market in the future.Related Posts:

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Microfinance News Synopsis: MOU signed with gramin bank for strengthening SHGs

Microfinance Focus — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:18:23 +0000

Microfinance Focus, July 29, 2010: Microfinance News Synopsis brings a compilation of industry headlines broadcasted by other news media from across the world.

MOU signed with gramin bank for strengthening SHGs: The Women Development Corporation (WDC), Bihar, on Wednesday signed an MoU with Madhya Bihar Gramin Bank (MBGB) for strengthening self-help groups (SHGs) in eight districts of the state by linking them to the bank. The WDC, the nodal agency for implementing the women development programmes in the state, links the concept of inclusive empowerment of women directly to their livelihood as only economic stability can make women more empowered and developed, said WDC, Bihar, managing director N Vijayalakshmi while signing an MoU with MBGB. “At present, 4,828 SHGs are running in these eight districts of which accounts of 2,516 SHGs have been opened,” she said and added that soon the accounts of the remaining 2,312 SHGs would be opened with the help of MBGB for which an agreement has been reached with the bank for three years [Times of India]

New regulations seen hurting micro-insurance: The recent changes requiring insurers to separate life from general business and new capital rules are likely to scuttle the growth of micro-insurance, players have said. They said the implementation of these guidelines will affect the nascent sub-sector with the potential of locking out new players and low-income earners. Similarly, the new capital requirement will raise the entry bar, locking out players who may be angling to enter the business through the segment. “Micro-insurance is a low-premium high-volume business and it’s effective through bundling strategy which involves packaging life and general insurance to increase uptake,” said Mr Nelson Kuria, the managing director of CIC Insurance. Whereas the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) is said to be responsive to the emerging development, failure to provide legal backing leaves micro-insurance at the mercy of the regulator [ Business Daily]Related Posts:

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Microfinance News Synopsis: SKS Microfinance IPO: Invest

Microfinance Focus — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:10:01 +0000

Microfinance Focus, July 26, 2010: Microfinance News Synopsis brings a compilation of industry headlines broadcasted by other news media from across the world.

SKS Microfinance IPO: Invest: Investors with a high risk appetite can consider subscribing to the Initial Public Offer (IPO) of SKS Microfinance, one of the largest microfinance NBFCs in India. Presence in the under-penetrated micro-financing segment offers immense growth potential. The company has over 2,000 branches across 19 States, a more diversified presence than any other microfinance institution (MFI) in India and is better equipped to leverage future growth opportunities. Investors may consider this IPO at Rs 724 per share or below. At this price the company may realise Rs 1,260 crore from this IPO. At a price-book value of 3.5 times post-offer, the stock would trade at Rs 724. The PE ratio at this price would be 26 times. Over the last 15 months, the company has raised funds from private equity investors at Rs 300/share. SKS Microfinance has a high capital adequacy ratio (of 28.3 per cent which may further improve to excess of 40 per cent post-offer) and strong risk-management systems [Business Line]

A Micro presence: This is the story of Feizal, a resident of Uttar Pradesh. He sells aluminum pots, his son works as a tailor’s apprentice and his wife and daughters roll bidis. Between them, they earn about Rs 2,000 a month to feed a family of 10. Interestingly, despite the seemingly hand-to-mouth existence, they also manage to save for one daughter’s wedding. Once, when Feizal fractured his thigh bone, not only did he cough up almost two-thirds of the family’s income for treatment, but he was also rendered jobless for eight months. The illness ate into his savings and pushed him to borrow from friends and neighbours. But as the researchers of Portfolios of the Poor–How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day observed, “the family’s financial networth deteriorated, but did not turn negative”. Feizal comes across as the perfect target for a micro-insurance health product. Except, how easy will it be to convince him to pay small premiums to buy an insurance cover to guard him in case such misfortune strikes [Financial Express]

HNB support to micro finance sector reaches Rs 7 bln in past 20 years: Sri Lanka’s micro finance sector has been financed to the tune of Rs. 7 billion over the last two decades by the Hatton National Bank (HNB), creating over 100,000 micro finance entrepreneurs and in addition provided access to over 400,000 in micro finance savings, a top banker said this week. Chandula Abeywickrema Chairman, Banking With The Poor Network and a top HNB executive, said the HNB is the only commercial bank in the country to develop a sustainable micro finance strategy. He was speaking at a press conference where it was announced that The Banking With The Poor network will convene the Asia Micro Finance Forum 2010 organized by the foundation for development corporation. This will be sponsored by the Citi Foundation and HNB as the local host. The forum will be held in Colombo from October [Sunday Times]Related Posts:

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Microfinance News Synopsis: Microfinance: Back to the Drawing Board

Microfinance Focus — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:28:27 +0000

Microfinance Focus, July 19, 2010: Microfinance News Synopsis brings a compilation of industry headlines broadcasted by other news media from across the world.

Microfinance: Back to the Drawing Board: Yohane Mdeme owns a food market in Tanzania. Though poor and with little to no collateral, he applied for a loan of $850 through Kiva.org to expand his small business. Twenty years ago in such a place and for such a client, Mdeme would never obtain the capital to increase his business. No bank would have given out such a small loan, much less to a person without collateral. Yet Mdeme is well on his way to receiving his requested amount in full. This process, called microfinance, has been put on a pedestal by development economists thanks to its high repayment rates and ability to provide capital and growth where it used to be nonexistent. But recent research links its success with national economic growth, suggesting it only succeeds in economies that are already beginning to bloom. In other words, microfinance is less of a medicine for the sickest patients and more of a therapy for patients already on the mend. Despite some localized successes, most treatments for addressing world poverty [Miller McCune]

Microinsurance needed: MICROINSURANCE does not currently exist in Fiji on any large scale, says Reserve Bank of Fiji governor Sada Reddy. But he said its power to increase people’s financial security and fortify their level of social protection warranted informational exchange on the issue. Mr Reddy said this product was now the fastest growing microfinance product in the world, providing benefits to millions of mothers, farmers and small business owners around the world. “Because of this phenomenon, the RBF has reviewed the Insurance Act of 1998 to ensure that there are no restrictions hindering the introduction of this product here in Fiji,” Mr Reddy said. “We totally support any initiative or pilot project in microinsurance, and hope that insurance companies do take the initiative to explore the potential of this market,” he said. Mr Reddy made these comments at a gathering of insurance and banking executives [Fiji Times]Related Posts:

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Health Insurance: The Top Priority of Microinsurance Customers

Microfinance Focus — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:17:42 +0000

By Asma Azmi,

Microfinance Focus, July 1, 2010: Microinsurance is increasingly being viewed as an instrument of freeing poor people from the shackles of poverty. By insuring against unanticipated risks like illnesses, accidents, crop failure and climatic catastrophes, it can enable accumulation of assets for productive purposes and wealth creation. Yet Microinsurance Centre data show that only 78 million people were covered by microinsurance in the world’s 100 poorest countries as of 2006 – a tiny part of the emerging market. Given the huge untapped market, development organizations and commercial insurers are entering the space to explore its potential.

Allianz Group, one of the leading Microinsurance providers has yesterday published a report ’Learning to insure the poor – The Allianz Microinsurance Report 2010‘, based on the demand studies for Microinsurance it conducted in collaboration with the German development agency, GTZ and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The studies were based in India, Indonesia and Laos and gauged the kinds of risks faced by low income households, their strategies to cope up with these risks and the possible insurance products that can meet their requirements.

The report findings suggest that low-income people are above all concerned with the risk of health problems, followed by death and property loss. A CARE study reflecting the risk profile of over a thousand households in Tamil Nadu shows that health crises had occurred, on average, more than once in every household. All other events were much less frequent. 13 percent reported the birth of child and 12 percent marriage, occasions that require lump sums of money. Accidents, death, and loss of livestock happened in around five percent of households. In Bangladesh and India, roughly half of the families had major health crises during the year. And in South Africa, about 80 percent of the families had to contribute substantially to funeral costs, largely due to HIV/AIDS. So families were thinking a lot about risks.

Only 10 percent of Indians have some form of health insurance, and most of it is inadequate, according to the World Bank. More than 70 percent of all health expenditure is paid out-of-pocket. Hospitalization emerged as one of the major concern as it happens suddenly, and in most cases the effected need cash to get service. If they don’t have cash, they end up selling the family cow in East Africa or the rice paddy in Cambodia. They do whatever it takes. When the crisis is over, they return from the hospital and do not have productive assets anymore and end up in a financial catastrophe.

The studies documented a post Tsunami scenario where effected households were ready to pay for insurance and named health insurance as their first priority, followed by maternity benefits, old age pensions and disability assistance. Life insurance being already prevalent in the region was not much in demand. Monthly contribution was the preferred payment option and the families expressed comfort in paying via self-help groups, especially for health insurance, followed by post offices and banks.

Studies in villages found that health care costs were responsible for over half of all cases of decline into poverty. R. Devaprakash, Project Director at CARE, observes: “It is health risk and the consequent expenditure that impoverish the poor. It drains their income and burdens them with debt to informal moneylenders at exorbitant rates of interest.” The high cost of medical care also keeps people from seeking help. Low-income people use health services less frequently, and they rely more heavily on untrained health practitioners providing low quality service.

Demand and Supply Mismatch

Although health insurance tops the priority list of poor people, it is life insurance or credit insurance that they are most likely to be offered. The mismatch between supply and demand can be attributed to the relative complexity of these products. Health insurance is much more difficult to provide than life, accidental death and disability insurance. Issues of adverse selection and moral hazard occur more frequently. Claims are also harder to assess and fraud more difficult to control.

Across India, self-help groups have used mutual health insurance to face up to this risk. A growing number of self-help groups also dedicate part of the money they collect to mutual health insurance. Members then pay health expenses out of this common fund. But mutual insurance has one major drawback: risks are shared only within a small group. Large claims easily exceed the resources of the fund. This severely limits coverage and in many cases, local schemes have gone bankrupt.

Barriers to Microinsurance Growth

Insurance policies have a high level of complexities and are cost intensive to be financed with small amounts of money and marketed in rural regions. The Microinsurance market is posed with challenges like risks assessment in the absence of sufficient data, customization of products according to the diverse needs of customers while standardizing for cost efficiency, client education and creation of a sustainable market.

Efficient delivery channel is one of the greatest barriers for Microinsurance products and leveraging the existing network of MFIs and CBOs is identified as a way to overcome this barrier in the report. MFIs can get insurance out in large numbers using existing marketing, training, and servicing channels. But MFIs are limiting as well and other delivery channels such as retail outlets, post offices or electronic mechanisms also need to be explored.

Low levels of insurance literacy is also a major hindrance as currently poor households are mostly using informal risk hedging mechanisms and need to be educated about the benefits of using formal risks transfer products. Realms of general risk communication, risk management capability-building, and information about specific insurance products need to be delved into before designing a Microinsurance product.Related Posts:

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Jordan’s Microfund for Women launches Microinsurance Product ‘CareGiver’

Microfinance Focus — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:12:41 +0000

Microfinance Focus, June 29, 2010: Microfund for Women (MFW), Jordan’s first microfinance program has recently launched the region’s first gender-sensitive microinsurance product, CareGiver. The products targets to help low-income women better cope with financial burdens associated with a medical emergency. With support from the International Labor Organization (ILO), MFW and its partner, Women’s World Banking (WWB), are providing this innovative insurance policy to MFW borrowers, of which there are currently 52,000. Ninety-seven percent are women. Clients pay a nominal monthly premium with their loan repayment and receive coverage for each night they stay in hospital.

Launched in April, CareGiver (or Ri’aya in Arabic), is designed to help women and their families better cope with the incidental expenses associated with hospitalization, such as medical fees, lost income and childcare. Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of WWB, says: “Women, more often than not, are the family’s primary caregiver. During a health event, there’s more than just medical expenses – lost wages, childcare, even transportation to and from the hospital – all add pressure on that household during a tough time. The CareGiver Program is designed to address just that issue.”

Clients are automatically covered when they take a new loan from MFW; they do not need to have a medical exam, and there are no exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Women are also covered if they need to go to hospital when they are pregnant. Clients can use their coverage on anything they choose, from transportation costs, nutritious food to covering financial losses from their business incurred due to their hospital confinement.

In the case of an unforeseen health event, low-income families typically use their savings or borrow from others to cover the expenses. In some cases, they may temporarily remove children from school to contribute to the family income,” says MFW Deputy General Manager, Fatina Abu Okab. “CareGiver will allow women and their families to manage risk and use their assets more productively.”

Last month, Naela Hamdan became the first claimant of CareGiver. An MFW client for seven years, Mrs. Hamdan was hospitalized for three days and was unable to work or care for her family. “I was very happy when I heard about this program. MFW quickly responded to my claim and I received my benefit just three days after lodging it. This kind of insurance really gives you peace of mind,” Mrs. Hamdan said, adding that the benefit helped her recoup the losses she sustained from having to close her business.

CareGiver is being provided in conjunction with Zurich Financial Services and Al Manara Insurance. Brandon Mathews, Zurich’s Head of Microinsurance, says: “Planning for adverse events – saving rather than investing in their businesses – may put women at a further disadvantage. Insurance is what is used to plan for such events. If we can unlock more entrepreneurial investment by low-income women while protecting them and their families against some of life’s risks, we’ll see a multiplier effect that’ll make a difference.”

Insurance is increasingly being recognized as a powerful tool in addressing poverty eradication. CareGiver is the second insurance product offered by MFW. All MFW clients are protected by the Himaya Life Insurance scheme, which offers coverage for death and full or partial disability. Unlike most life insurance schemes offered by microfinance institutions, Himaya also covers the life of the borrower’s spouse.Related Posts:

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AKAM’s Micro Health Insurance Product reaches 60, 000 Clients

Microfinance Focus — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:20:38 +0000

Microfinance Focus, June 15, 2010: Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM) is an industry pioneer in developing micro health insurance products. Realizing the fact that a near absence of health insurance, often leaves the poor impoverished due to illnesses and sudden causalities, AKAM opened the First Microinsurance Agency Pakistan in 2007 and the First Microinsurance Agency Tanzania in late 2008. To further extend its services, it has recently tied up with Pakistan’s New Jubilee Insurance Company (NJI), which developed micro health insurance products to be distributed through MFIs/NGOs to the uninsured poor.

Peter Wrede, Microinsurance Specialist

AKAM’s hospitalisation insurance, for example, helps families prepare for both expected and unexpected health expenditures by encouraging saving for the future and providing insurance safety nets for catastrophic events. The insurance safety nets kick in when households experience an event requiring immediate hospitalisation, such as accidents, obstructed births and acute illnesses. Other products protect families from the death of a breadwinner. Crop, livestock and asset insurance products are also being developed

In an exclusive interview with Microfinance Focus, AKAM’s Microinsurance Specialist, Mr. Peter Wrede discusses some of the complexities of Microinsurance products and the progress made so far. Before joining AKAM Mr. Peter was the Chief Marketing Actuary in Hannover Re. Here are the excerpts from the interview.

Microfinance Focus: Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance was among the industry pioneers in developing micro health insurance products. What factors in your opinion are essential to be considered before creating a micro-insurance product?

Peter Wrede: Firstly try to understand what people need and what people want. It may not be the same in respect of risk transfer. In the case of health microinsurance, the most important element is the existence of affordable quality health care providers to work with, and their willingness to cooperate allowing the degree of control necessary to limit overutilization and fraud; ideally you will also get special discounted fees from them in view of the limited payment capacity of the insured (and in exchange for more clients and more predictable cash flows).

For health and all other forms of microinsurance, further fundamental elements that need to be present include a communication channel to inform the potential clients, a distribution channel to get the insurance to the clients, and the enrolment information to the insurer, and a premium collection channel to get the premium to the insurer.

And of course, if you are not an insurance company yourself and don’t want to operate outside the laws and regulation, you will need an approved risk carrier like insurer, mutual insurance company etc. Once all that is in place, the procedures for operating and servicing the insurance are as important as the product itself – or you might consider it to be part of the product so that should be well established before the launch.

Microfinance Focus: In terms of healthcare what are the biggest financial risks for poor households that you have come across?

Peter Wrede: In patients hospital care can be much more expensive than any episode requiring only out-patient care: the really expensive things happen in hospital and take some days, and it is them that throw families into poverty and are particularly suited to be insured. Chronic illness also has the potential to impoverish families, but is more difficult to insure due to its long term nature and the fact that many people in your target market may already be suffering from it, so unless there is enough solidarity among the healthy insured you’ll have to exclude these pre-existing conditions.

Microfinance Focus: Given the premium or the cost of insurance, are the microfinance clients willing to pay for health insurance? What measure is AKAM taking to educate them?

Peter Wrede: They are often not willing to pay, and there is a general mismatch between what they are willing to pay for an insurance and what they can be observed to actually pay for the same services in the absence of insurance; that is because when asked for their willingness to pay insurance premium, they are not in a stress situation, whereas when required to make high medical spending decisions, a family member is actually suffering they are under stress.

Insurance can bridge that gap to some extent by reducing inefficiencies in health care delivery and passing on bulk purchasing power to insured individuals. However, it is necessary to influence people’s attitude towards insurance by raising the awareness of the risks that they face and by building up trust in the mechanisms we propose to deal with them.

Microfinance Focus: What medical benefits does your health insurance package include?

Peter Wrede: We insure hospitalisation – both cashless in our network of panel hospitals and via reimbursement in case of emergency treatment in non-network hospitals – and complement that with pre-paid medicine (such as out-patient consultation and ante-natal care at discounted fixed cost) and related services such as access to discounted drugs and lab tests and tele-consultation.

Microfinance Focus: What are the risks associated with health insurance products?

Peter Wrede: From the point of view of the insurer or facilitators, among the many risks there is a risk of lower than expected uptake i.e. less people than expected buy the insurance, higher than expected claims, if premium is not enough to cover claims, the risk of higher than expected operating expenses and margins are not enough to cover costs, and the usual business risks of fraud, misunderstanding, disruption of partnerships, failure of partners (e.g. to scale up), turnover of trained / key staff, natural calamity, civil wars etc.

Microfinance Focus: The insurance products need to be adapted to the heterogeneity of the customer base. Can you elaborate how AKAM customized its insurance products according to the different regions and customer base that it is serving?

Peter Wrede: Giving an overview I would say that the main distinctions are urban versus rural, because both the morbidity and the available health care infrastructure differ considerably and again they differ from city to city and from rural area to rural area. Other parameters that affect the product design are willingness/ability to pay and the priorities of your local distribution partners. In addition, you may want to address different health issues with different products, e.g. hospitalisation without maternity and a dedicated maternity product for pregnant women being sold at the same time in the same market.

Microfinance Focus: Can we get an estimate of the number of clients getting benefitted by AKAM’s micro health insurance worldwide?

Peter Wrede: Currently close to 60,000, all in Pakistan so far.

Microfinance Focus: With New Jubilee Insurance Company, AKAM is following a ‘partner-agent model’. Are you following a similar model in other regions also? What are the benefits of this model?

Peter Wrede: Yes, we are following the same model in East Africa with the Jubilee Insurance Group, and look forward to establish similar ventures in other countries with insurers that are not part of the Aga Khan Development Network. We believe that the benefit of forging a strong trusting relationship with one reputable and top-class partner outweighs the potential benefit of shopping around the cover in the market as brokers would do; because we also assume that there is not enough supply for health microinsurance to provide a choice of insurers.

Microfinance Focus: What is the average cost of your insurance products?

Peter Wrede: 3 USD per person per year

Microfinance Focus: Which technological tools has AKAM deployed to achieve efficiency in micro-insurance services?

Peter Wrede: So far our attempts to deploy technology such as smart chip cards have not been successful.

Microfinance Focus: Which technology platform AKAM is using for micro-insurance. What features does this platform holds and how satisfied are you with the performance?

Peter Wrede: We opted for Gradatim’s MF-Insure because it is web-based, providing the functionality we needed like data collection/warehousing/aggregation/query, and claims management support, also to our distribution partners at the point of sale, providing an offline functionality to overcome limited internet access. We were comforted by the fact that Gradatim had track record in the field, and we believe in software as a service. So far, we are satisfied with their support and service during the customisation of MF-Insure to our products and processes, and early end user feedback is positive.Related Posts:

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Popularize Microinsurance for Financial Inclusion- India’s Finance Minister

Microfinance Focus — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:37:44 +0000

Microfinance Focus, June 9, 2010: Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the new building of Insurance Institute of India in Mumbai yesterday, India’s Finance Minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee asked insurance industry to give more focus to generate the required level of awareness about the benefits of insurance to rural people particularly those living in semi-urban and rural areas. “One of the important challenges before the insurance industry today is to generate the required level of awareness about the benefits of insurance to our people particularly living in semi-urban and rural areas. It should be our endeavour to take all necessary steps to ensure the reach of insurance to masses” he said.

“One of the main objectives of promoting financial inclusion packages is to economically empower those sections of society which are otherwise denied access to financial services, by providing banking and credit services thereby focusing on bridging the rural credit gap. Lack of protective elements may do not serve the objective of promoting financial inclusion packages as the targeted section may fall back into the clutches of poverty in the event of unforeseen contingencies. Hence, to provide a hedge against these unforeseen risks, I would like popularization of micro insurance as one of the essential ingredients of financial inclusion packages”, Finance Minister remarked.
Recognizing the importance of crop insurance in India where large section of people are engaged in agriculture and the farmers are mostly dependent on monsoons he raise his concern over the fact that crop insurance is still not popular among the farmers. At present only 20% farmers are covered under Agriculture Insurance Schemes. The schemes are implemented by 25 States and 2 Union Territories in the Country and there is a huge gap between the amount of crop loan disbursed and that covered under the scheme.
Emphasising on the adoption of new technology in the industry he said, “It is an accepted fact that insurance business is technology driven. It has the potential to save cost and hence, the scope for reducing price of product. Coming years will witness a total revolution in the ways of doing business. I request you all to make maximum use of technology to extend outreach. E-commerce will be increasingly used in all sectors including banks and insurance and products will be sold on Internet”.Related Posts:

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