Microinsurance
www.microlinks.org/fs/insurance

While poor people often improve their financial positions with microcredit, they easily fall back into poverty as soon as they face a financial crisis such as the death of a breadwinner, payment of essential health care costs, or the loss of productive assets. Microinsurance can help low-income households better manage the many risks they face and protect their gains. Unlike microcredit, which initially depended on donors to bring significant pools of funds to develop, maintain and expand microfinance institutions, microinsurance is being pushed by the commercial insurance industry and has been expanding and evolving rapidly.

A loan officer enrolls a farmer in Opportunity International Bank of Malawi’s weather insurance program. Photo: OIBM

USAID’s Microenterprise Development office seeks to provide information that helps explain the opportunities of microinsurance, the international lessons learned, and practical means for implementing microinsurance projects. To help meet these learning objectives, a Microinsurance Note series was developed to provide an introduction and overview of key topics in microinsurance with links to resources that allow for greater exploration. For more on this research, please click here.

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