AXA Global Parametrics is looking to offer its parametric insurance product in the Philippines, primarily targeting the local agriculture sector, Busines World Online reports. “In the Philippines, we don’t offer any products yet but we are working...[with] companies, partners to try to sell the product across the Philippines,” AXA Philippines Chief General Insurance Officer Claude Seigne said in the interview.

Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance will start selling insurance products that compensate farmers hit by drought in Indonesia as early as this fall, Asian Nikkei Review reports. With a premium of 50,000 rupiahs ($3.76), contract farmers will be entitled to be compensated 500,000 rupiahs if a drought occurs, the newspaper also details.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and specialist reinsurance company Reasuransi MAIPARK Indonesia have agreed to develop insurance products to help local farmers mitigate weather-related risks, Jakarta Globe reports. The agreement will establish insurance schemes that pay out benefits to farmers if a weather event exceeds levels in a predetermined index — which will measure rainfall levels, temperatures, wind speeds and crop yields, expected to provide cheaper and less complicated insurance benefits to farmers in the event of a natural disaster. "The region's changing climate has

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and PT Reasuransi MAIPARK have agreed to jointly develop index-based insurance products to hedge risks against adverse weather events for agribusinesses, bank agriculture-loan portfolios, and farmer groups. The impacts and effects of adverse weather events—such as droughts, floods, and hurricanes—were felt during the most recent El Niño, when some of the worst hit agribusinesses reported up to 30 percent drops in projected yields. IFC will support MAIPARK—a special-risk reinsurance company—to work with local insurance companies to develop, sell, and

Pacific Island countries will have better access to catastrophe insurance to reduce financial impacts in the aftermath of natural disasters, including major cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis, as a result of a new regional disaster risk finance project in Fiji, a World Bank's press release reports. The US$29.73 million project - PCRAFI: Furthering Disaster Risk Finance in the Pacific - builds on eight years of regional collaboration through the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Insurance Initiative (PCRAFI), and shared experiences from similar catastrophe risk pools supported by the

Australian farmers who took up multi-peril crop insurance claim it helped them sleep at night, not worrying about a third failed harvest, ABC News reports. The Australian Government is working to support the development of a more diverse and mature agricultural insurance market, including multi-peril crop insurance, the report also adds.

In an interview with ABC News Australia, Jay Horton, an agribusiness consultant with Strategis Partners says only few Australian farmers subscribe to insurance despite the huge risk of growing a crop each year. Mr. Norton also notes that that while some companies in Australia offer multi-peril crop insurance (MPCI), even fewer offer index insurance. This situation contrasts the fact that "insurance reduces the likelihood that the company will have to raise costly external capital at the wrong time." Mr. Horton also urges better forms of risk management in the agricultural sector in Australia

On Chinadialogue.net, Zhang Chun, Senior Researcher at Chinadialogue, wrote that the Chinese government is pushing the insurance industry to offer climate risk policies, as climate changes increases the frequency and severity of typhoons. In the agricultural sector, the most relevant type of insurance policy related to climate change in China is called climate index insurance. Instead of determining pay-outs on the basis of damage and loss, policies are based on a weather index that sets compensation levels based on different weather conditions, such as rainfall," Zhang adds. Click here to