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Badly Needed, Hard to Deliver: The Challenges of Selling Drought Insurance to African Farmers
Millions of poor farmers in Africa can't move beyond subsistence levels because of droughts and other weather disasters. Insuring farmers against these risks is key to helping build their resilience to climate shocks. But providing this insurance – while making a profit – is no easy matter. Jim Hight explores the challenges in discussing WorldCover, a drought insurance provider that's gaining traction in Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
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MTN, Sanlam Insurtech Partnership May Face Stumbling Blocks
Arthur Goldstuck, founder of World Wide Worx and ICT analyst, points out that with mobile money having failed repeatedly in SA, mobile insurance offers no guarantee of success, in a country with a large number of uninsured populations.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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MetLife Plans To Disrupt $2.7 Trillion Life Insurance Industry Using Ethereum Blockchain
If successful, this program has the potential to transform the insurance industry as a whole, creating new markets, products, and the ability to serve a more diverse set of customers at lower price points.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Tags
- blockchain, insurance
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Jan Dhan Yojana’s social security feature has failed to take off
The claim numbers for two in-built social security schemes under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana accounts are at abysmally low level of less than 10,000 claims paid so far.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Press release: OPIC and Liberty Mutual Insurance Launch $1 Billion Agreement to Catalyze Private Sector Investment in the Developing World
This is OPIC’s first agreement with a U.S. owned insurance company to share credit risk across a global portfolio of new OPIC-originated loans to commercial banks and other non-bank financial institutions.
- Region
- North America
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Climate-Proofing Poverty Graduation Programs: A New Study Explores Solutions
Imagine building a business from the ground up – only to see it literally washed away with every drought and flood due to the effects of climate change. These weather-related cycles, which disproportionately impact women, keep millions in poverty and threaten millions more. Nicole Mills with The BOMA Project and Alex Russell with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab detail a new project pairing poverty graduation programs with livestock insurance – and discuss the randomized control trial designed to see if it actually works.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Impact Assessment
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Why Focus Groups Aren’t Enough: A Surprising Lesson in Marketing Insurance in Africa
Building a customer-centric company naturally requires engagement with end users. But as digital insurance provider Inclusivity Solutions discovered, sometimes just speaking to customers is not enough. Tyler Tappendorf discusses how the company combined customer feedback with more quantitative data, after focus group input conflicted with real-world results in marketing campaigns in East Africa.
- Categories
- Finance
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No One Should be ‘Scared to Live too Long’ – Innovating Insurance for the Elderly
After a chilling conversation with his family housekeeper about her fear of "living too long" and becoming a burden on her family, Tyron Fouche was inspired to start Nobuntu, an insurance plan for low-income South Africans. Combining an ancient risk-sharing design with modern tools like chatbots and biometric tech, the plan offers customers an income that actually increases as they get older. Fouche discusses Nobuntu's innovative model – and the big challenges it faces – in the latest post in NextBillion’s "Startup Showcase" series.
- Categories
- Finance
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