GIIF partners with some of the most impactful and innovative agricultural insurance partners to implements its programs across all its markets. The GIIF Program funds and provide technical assistance to these implementing partners comprised of an intermediary “broker/agent”, who develops index insurance products, and regional insurance companies. The index insurance products are often bundled with loans or credit and distributed mostly through portfolio-level aggregators such as agribusinesses, banks and microfinance institutions, and cooperatives.

On the private sector side, GIIF’s global portfolio includes implementing partners such as ACRE Africa, CARD-Pioneer Microinsurance Inc.), Guy Carpenter, PT Reasuransi Maipark, MiCRO, MicroEnsure, PlaNet Guarantee, Sanasa Insurance, Green Delta Insurance Company, among others.

On the public sector side, GIIF works closely with governments at the regional and national level on policy issues to create an enabling legal and regulatory environment for index insurance. The Program works closely with CNAAS (Compagnie Nationale d’Assurance Agricole du Sénégal), AMAB (Assurance Mutuelle Agricole du Benin), CIMA General Secretariat (Conférence Interafricaine des Marchés d’Assurances), Kenya Insurance Regulatory Authority and meteorological departments, Ministries and relevant public sector bodies in GIIF operational countries.

The GIIF Program organizes an annual event to bring all its implementing partners together to share their experiences, lessons learned and implementation challenges. These events provide a good opportunity to these partners to network, share resources to better develop their products, and receive additional technical training from the Program on select issues. 

Insurers

GIIF’s partners in each region work with various insurance companies to develop index insurance products. For instance, local insurance partners have received training from GIIF technical partners on the design of index insurance products, policies and on managing claims processes. Some of the insurance companies within GIIF’s portfolio includes UAP Insurance,SORAS, Focus Insurance, Mayfair, Alternative Insurance Company (AIC) (AIC), Sanasa Insurance, PT Reasuransi Maipark, Green Delta in Bangladesh, Allianz Mali and Burkina Faso, and CARD Pioneer Microinsurance Inc., among others. 

Reinsurers

GIIF projects are supported with reinsurance by key regional and international players including: Swiss Reinsurance Company, Africa Reinsurance Company, Cica Reinsurance Company, and Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organisation (MiCRO). Due to the co-variant nature of catastrophic risks insured under the GIIF program, transferring most of the assumed risk to international markets is imperative. Besides underwriting the risk, reinsurers significantly contribute to knowledge transfer on product structuring, pricing and data analysis. For instance, Swiss Re Corporate Solution has worked with GIIF and its implementing partners for approximately 4 years and this technical partnership has been crucial to developing viable index insurance products, structuring appropriate pricing and building effective risk transfer markets. During this time, they provided technical assistance in scoping and awareness raising work through market identification; they conducted desk research and feasibility studies; they worked on index insurance product development in collaboration with selected local stakeholders; and they tried to build local capacity development through offering training events, developing training material, and contributing to GIIF’s knowledge management depository in the form of product case study development.

Reinsurance is an effective mechanism of ensuring that a country’s economic losses triggered by a disaster are shared with other insurance companies owned and domiciled outside the affected economy. The inflow of foreign currency at such a time is of paramount importance to a country’s recovery phase. Considering that GIIF aims to develop technically sound insurance products, effective distribution channels, strong local insurers and accessible regional and international risk transfer markets, collaborating with reinsurance companies is an important component of the program and its operating model.

Enabling the enrivonment

Under its regulatory, policy and legal component, GIIF works closely with governments at the regional and national level on policy issues to create an enabling legal and regulatory environment for index insurance. GIIF also carries out feasibility studies and index insurance pilots to test the feasibility of index insurance markets. Some of the public sector stakeholders are the Ministries of Agriculture, Ministries of Finance, insurance regulators, meteorologist agencies, NGOs, and associations.

Through these partnerships with public stakeholders, GIIF aims at achieving:

1)      Promoting the vital linkage between finance and poverty alleviation through public policy dialogues around index insurance regulations and enabling environment;

2)      Encouraging policy makers to provide appropriate fiscal support to the agricultural industry such as premium subsidies;

3)      Creating sustainable public-private partnerships for actions, knowledge sharing, and data management.

Learn more about GIIF's technical partners and knowledge partners.