Michael McCord presented an overview of the findings from the Micro Insurance Learning and Knowledge (MILK) project.
Although there is no single definition of Microinsurance , it is difficult to track the exact numbers, but one conclusion is that by any definition, microinsuruance is growing dramatically around the world and especially in Africa.
Microinsurance Insurance is in 39 countries in the Africa (Michael is standing in front of map in photo in presentation). There are now 511 microinsurance providers (70 percent are mutuals , cooperatives, and community based covering 44.4 million people with 598 different products. The vast majority are for life insurance 33.9 million. Property and agricultural insurance is lagging far behind with only 800,000k policyholders for property and 300,000 for agriculture.The growth has been dramatic. When the first study was completed in 2005 was only 3.5 million policyholders. By 2008 that had risen to 14.7 million.
One surprising finding, for me anyway, was that more than 60% of microinsurance in Africa is in South Africa. (I probably shouldn't be surprised by this because of the thousands of page views on this blog, views from people in South Africa are second only to those from the USA.) This is mainly due to life and credit life and demand for funeral insurance in South Africa. West Africa has the greatest number of people covered by health insurance (non-government) mainly due to community-based health insurance programs.
As mentioned earlier mutuals and cooperative are the most common MI provider but the market includes MFIs, NGOs, and the second most common type is commerical insurers. African mutuals and community based organizations were the most prevalent delivery channel for MI followed by MFIs. Mobile phone companies are the fastest growing channel. The lack of knowledge about insurance is still cited by 67% of organizations and 78% of low income individuals. Despite this lack of awareness insurance is expected to continue to grow rapidly in Africa. For more information see MILK report of The Landscape of Microinsuance 2012 at Microinsurance Centre, microinsurancecentre.org or www.mfw4.org.
