SEPTEMBER 14 and 15, OECD Headquarters, PARIS

Climate risk and its impact has been an issue of key significance for the insurance industry. Risks are outlined for all eco-systems, societies, economies, industries and agriculture. 

Is Index Insurance the Solution? Index insurance is an innovative financial instrument to help poor smallholder farmers manage the increasing climate risks to their harvests.  Index insurance will allow farmers to survive adverse weather or destroyed harvests and potentially open up agri-credit markets; enabling farmers to protect their assets and invest in their farms, without depending on government handouts which arrive too late after disasters have struck. Index insurance products can also be used to protect governments and businesses against natural disaster risks. Climate change-related index insurance solutions are finding wider application to mitigate losses in power generation in the renewable/clean energy sector (hydro, wind and solar), and in the tourism sector.

Key issues discussed at the Conference will center on:

• Sharing innovations and innovative solutions in the index insurance space to mitigate the risk of governments, enterprises and households.

• Creating stronger synergies and better alignment - Public Private Partnership in scaling up index insurance markets

• Major challenges in developing index insurance markets in developing countries.

• Index insurance as tool to address inclusive finance and growth – moving away from individualized underwriting, leveraging multitude of distribution channels/platforms, and unlocking investments which was hitherto constrained due to the risk of climate change on governments, businesses and households.

Examples of Plenary Sessions:

• Favorable conditions for achieving scale, building markets and institutionalize Index Insurance

• Financial Solutions in Agricultural Risk Management

• Distribution Channels for Index Insurance

In addition, we will be having multiple breakout sessions focusing on broader topics such as Drivers and barriers of innovation, Client Value, Enhancing Agricultural Insurance Product Quality, Data Challenges, Role of Governments and International Organizations etc.

What would you like to discuss during the Global Conference? We invite the COP members to give us ideas, feedback and suggestions on the content and design of the conference. Please write to Carole Sagbo (dsagbo@ifc.org),  Kaavya Krishna (kashokkrishna@ifc.org)