Microinsurance Conference - Final

Wow, I am back in the States now. Was just too busy to finish blogging from Dakar. That was a good thing. The second day I met even more people interested in our Ghana project including a number of people getting ready to begin work there. So I really feel like we have a lot to offer them and see some very realistic possibilities for partnerships.

The second day featured a presenter who is working on an indexed-based insurance product like ours except for livestock in northern Kenya. What I loved about his project was that he was educating the prospective customers of the product about insurance through and insurance game. That really made me a great idea to develop a game to help explain insurance and our product too in Ghana.

Also saw some presentations on the demand for microinsurance in general and learned that there was an inverse relationship between perceived need for microinsurance by a household and remittances received (money sent to them from a family member outside the community). Evidently, that family member is viewed as their "insurance" if something goes wrong. (I guess it would be interesting to find out if that family member sending the money to their family back in the village feels the same way).

Overall, we saw that indexed-insurance, like what we are working on, still has a lot of work to be done, including figuring out how to sell it, and at what level to sell it to: Government or government bank (Macro level), rural banks or microfinance institutions (Meso level, or individuals (Micro level). My opinion is still that the meso level has the best potential. But I spent the last few hours of the conference running several different ideas passed people on alternative product and am interested in beginning to work on that. I just shared the idea with our team on campus and think it has potential and could eliminate some of the problems of a "traditional" indexed-based insurance product. Will see after we start crunching the numbers if that will work. Stay tuned.

The other thing I got from the conference was just how well health insurance seemed to be developing. Still lots of challenges but growth was impressive and programs were working well passed there pilot stages now. It was interesting that almost all the health insurers were mutuals.

The day concluded by looking at intersection and synergies of microfinance institutions and microinsurers. Currently most microinsurance is delivered through them, but there was a stated need to move beyond that, while at the same time continuing to improve how MFI's work with microinsurance.

I still have to get through all my business cards and return emails for people I met there who want to exchange ideas or work together. Overall, it was an incredible experience and well worth my time.

Faithfully Submitted,
Jim