Call for proposals

This topic explores how insurance providers successfully enter and operate in the inclusive insurance market. The issue of the protection gap in the world and the region should be addressed with greater depth and detail. It is therefore essential to understand the reality in order to commit to a paradigm shift. Key areas of interest include:

• Success factors - What are the critical success factors within the ecosystem that are essential for business models to be considered successful?
• Incentives - What are the incentives to invest in the inclusive insurance market and how do they evolve over time?
• Strategic orientation - How do insurers integrate inclusive insurance into their overall strategy?
• Long-term vision - How can a long-term vision help create future markets?
• Viability - What are the key success factors for making inclusive insurance viable?
• Learning opportunities - What can traditional insurance learn from inclusive insurance markets?
• Social and financial balance - How can, and should, the creation of a positive social impact be combined and measured along with the creation of a profitable business?

The focus should also extend to analysing the inclusive insurance value chain (distribution partners / brokers / insurers / reinsurers): which is the most important, which is profitable, which is not, what is the appropriate division of roles and responsibilities, and are these aligned with the division of revenues between partners? Proposals on this topic and the resulting presentations should be quantitatively based, with the points supported by financial data covering more than three years.

The limited number of efficient distribution and management systems remains a key barrier to closing the insurance gap. Digital platforms and new data aggregators are expanding the potential for digital financial services to reach previously excluded customers. Key areas of interest include:

• High touch solutions – To what extent can high-touch solutions be complemented or replaced by low- or even no-touch solutions.
• Data and risk modelling - What are effective tools for data collection and analysis (including weather data), risk modelling and their application in developing markets?
• Technological impact - What are the benefits and challenges of using technologies in distribution, risk profiling, pricing, claims handling, and product design?
• Cost implications - What are the financial considerations for implementing these technologies?
• Digital channels - How have these channels been used to overcome geographical, infrastructural and social constraints?
• Advanced technologies - How can advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain, and IoT be applied to increase operational efficiency, enhance client experience in inclusive insurance and close the insurance/protection gap?
• Learning opportunities - What can we learn from other sectors and how can we partner with other industries to increase outreach?

The conference organisers are particularly interested in proposals from technology companies offering technologies. Submissions should address the benefits and challenges of using the technology or application presented. Submission should also include case studies showcasing mutually beneficial partnerships, their results in delivering products and services to low-income markets, and how such partnerships can be proactively managed. They must provide clear examples of results in reaching low-income markets. 

This topic focuses on the development of new inclusive insurance products and partnerships. Submissions should explore ways in which products or partnerships can be structured to broaden outreach and coverage, while delivering a strong value proposition to the target market. Key areas of interest include:

• Comprehensive coverage: How can inclusive insurance go beyond existing products and work on more comprehensive health covers, or even savings and pensions?
• Product expansion: What are the ways we can expand our product offering to tackle priorities?
• Telemedicine integration: How can telemedicine improve access to healthcare and insurance?
• Health innovations: What’s next after hospital cash?
• Migrant and remittance solutions: How can we reach new customers such as migrant workers and build on remittances?
• Government programmes and partnerships: How can we accelerate the expansion of government and social protection programmes, and how can insurance companies work with them?

Preference will be given to presentations that include details relating to product outreach and performance indicators (including financial results).

Over the past few decades, microfinance has been able to reach millions of customers that traditional banking could not, making it an important distribution channel for insurance. At the same time, access to savings provides an important layer of risk management alongside insurance. In addition to providing affordable risk management for their clients, microfinance institutions are increasingly seeing the need to protect their own loan portfolios against major shocks. The organisers are interested in hearing success stories from microfinance organisations, particularly in Latin America, that are effectively offering insurance to their clients. Key areas of interest include:

• Challenges and opportunities: What have been the main challenges in offering insurance to microfinance clients? How has financial inclusion become a key driver and an essential enabler for insurance inclusion?
• Partnerships: How do you find and select the right risk taker and manage partnerships successfully?
• Education and awareness: How did they educate their clients about insurance?
• Regulation: What role did regulation play?
• Needs assessment: How did they analyse their clients' needs?
• Institutional resilience: What measures have they taken to protect their own loan portfolio against major catastrophes and build awareness about the impact of climate change?
• Combining financial services: How did they successfully combine different financial services to increase customer resilience?

The organisers will favour submissions that are “innovative” either in terms of product or customer journey.

It is essential that households, farmers and MSMEs prepare for a range of potential risks and implement measures to safeguard their economic activities. The affordability of insurance solutions remains a significant challenge. Understanding and reducing risks, the combination of macro-, meso- and micro-level climate and disaster risk finance, insurance and social protection, as well as the development of index-based and other solutions, is vital for strengthening the resilience of vulnerable and poor communities. The organisers are interested in understanding the current developments of insurance schemes, including parametric (index-based) and other catastrophic risk-focused products aimed at protecting households, farmers and MSMEs against natural disasters and pandemic risks. Key areas of interest include:

• Scaling disaster insurance: What is required to expand the availability of insurance against disasters?
• Affordability: What strategies can be employed to make climate risk insurance affordable and sustainable?
• Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs): What are the key factors for success in PPPs? How can governments support the development and expansion of disaster risk insurance, including through risk mitigation, loss prevention, and blended finance solutions?
• Tailored solutions: How can such solutions be designed and tailored to meet the needs of the target group?
• Value chain integration: How can insurance along the value chain help increase protection against disasters?
• Pre-financing: How can we expand pre-financing covers to counter the risks of impending catastrophes?

The conference organisers are also interested in receiving proposals that report on the role of governments in developing solutions or facilitating the expansion of disaster risk insurance and that consider risk mitigation and loss prevention efforts, including blended finance solutions.

By understanding the challenges and analysing the demand for insurance in emerging economies, insurance providers and policymakers can design more effective and sustainable microinsurance initiatives that meet the needs of underserved populations. However, understanding demand and customer needs remains one of the key barriers for insurance providers in increasing insurance coverage. Key areas of interest include:

• Demand analysis: How can successful demand analysis interventions be designed and implemented?
• Research methodologies and questions: What are promising research methodologies? What are the key research questions?

The organisers are interested in successful case studies that demonstrate effective approaches to analysing demand and understanding client needs.

Reducing costs and increasing efficiency are key business objectives, and scale is a crucial factor in achieving these goals. It is essential that policies and action plans, which include all relevant stakeholders at the highest level of government, are put in place to identify and overcome the barriers to market development. It is vital that regulators play a key role in market development. The harmonisation of insurance regulation across countries, or the greater mutual recognition of regulatory and supervisory systems in other jurisdictions, could assist providers in reaching the necessary scale. Key questions include:

• National strategies: What are the key considerations for designing a national inclusive insurance strategy?
• International best practices: What insights can be gained from international best practices?
• Advocacy: How are regulators and supervisors taking the lead in championing advocacy of insurance as a tool to achieve various governmental such as financial inclusion, food security, rural development?
• Market fragmentation: How can fragmented target markets be addressed to enable providers to reach scale?
• Cross-border cooperation: How can countries cooperate to facilitate this?
• Common regulation: What are the experiences in regions that currently have common regulation?
• Efficiency across markets: What are the prerequisites for companies to offer similar products in various markets to increase efficiency and outreach?

The conference organisers invite proposals that examine how insurance supervisors can foster environments that facilitate scale and innovation while maintaining consumer protection.

The objectives of inclusive insurance are increasingly aligned with many donor priorities. Donors are well placed to address both public and private sector market failures and can act as catalysts to attract private sector interest in a new and unfamiliar market segment, provide much-needed investment in infrastructure, help build the capacity of local actors, and promote policy changes to remove barriers to access. However, lack of coordination and limited insurance expertise can lead to duplication and even competition among donors, as well as with existing insurance providers and regulators. Key areas of interest include:

·       Engagement considerations: As a donor, what are the key questions to consider when getting involved in inclusive insurance?

• Goals and measurement: What are the goals and objectives, and how can impact and success be measured?
• Coordination: How to identify the need for donor interventions, coordinate donor interventions and avoid duplication?
• Partnership management: How to successfully manage partnerships, roles and expectations?
• Holistic risk management: How to identify priority risks and the most relevant insurance products for the target market to develop a holistic risk management approach?
• Stakeholder expectations: What do other stakeholders, such as the insurance industry or government representatives, expect from donors?

Submissions should highlight examples of successful donor interventions, emphasizing coordination, measurable outcomes, and strategies for fostering collaboration with public and private stakeholders to address barriers and enhance market development.

Research has shown that women face different risks than men, value different components of insurance solutions, and often engage and build trust differently. However, insurers and insurance policies do not always take gender-specific needs into account. Effective insurance solutions need to be tailored, designed and marketed for women. Key areas of interest include:

• Access barriers: What are the main reasons why women have less access to insurance? How can this be addressed?
• Gender-specific needs: What are the gender-specific risk management requirements and how can insurers better understand women's needs through market research and product design?
• Financial implications: What are the financial implications for insurers of gender-specific products and services?
• Regulatory collaboration: How have insurers worked with regulators to improve women's access to insurance.

The conference organisers welcome proposals that aim to understand gender-specific needs, usage and customer journeys to get value from insurance, as well as partnerships and distribution models that have helped facilitate access to insurance for women customers.

There is a need to build the capacity of people, societies and institutions at many levels, such as the financial literacy of the target market, to integrate insurance into a broader risk management approach. Insurers need a better understanding of the needs and preferences of the underserved customer potential. Organisations with successful experience of capacity building at any of these levels are invited to apply to present their methods, tools and strategies.

• Sequencing interventions: Is there a necessary sequencing of the effectiveness of financial education interventions?
• Financial literacy: What have been successful financial education campaigns and what impact have they had on the target population's culture regarding risk management and the adoption of inclusive insurance?
• Insurance literacy for digital products: How can stakeholders' insurance literacy be enhanced in relation to digitally-enabled products and delivery mechanisms.

Presentations should include a cost-benefit analysis assessing the effectiveness of the approaches used.

The organisers are interested in the scientific analysis of inclusive insurance markets.

Empirical, theoretical and policy-oriented papers are invited on topics such as:

• Experience with involving insureds – individually or in groups – in inclusive insurance products (e.g. package design, pricing, claims adjudication, administration)
• The impact of inclusive insurance on welfare gains and financial protection, as well as its contribution to economic growth and reducing inequality; inclusive insurance-driven improvements for the insured (micro level) and economic growth (macro level)
• Inclusive insurance development (e.g. product innovations, marketing distribution)
• Evidence of innovative risk-bundling or innovation in methods (e.g. new data modelling, obtaining high-resolution data)
• Closing protection gaps: Implementation of increased insurance uptake in the informal sectors of low- and middle-income countries
• New technological applications (InsurTech) in inclusive insurance
• The effects of crop/agricultural inclusive insurance on food security and rural-urban migration, and new technologies in agricultural insurance
• Experiences with health inclusive insurance, also in light of COVID-19
• Inclusive insurance regulation: The good, the bad, and the missing
• Social and ethical aspects of and barriers to inclusive insurance
• Inclusive insurance education and awareness raising: What works, what does not?
• Inclusive insurance and climate risk