On October 24th, 2006 USAID’s Microenterprise Development office hosted the ninth seminar in its Microfinance After Hours Seminar Series, "Innovations in Risk Management: Index-Based Insurance". This seminar was co-hosted with EGAT’s Office of Agriculture.

>> Download this presentation

Lena Heron of USAID’s Office of Agriculture opened the seminar and introduced the topic of index based insurance as an important innovation in risk management. She introduced Jerry Skees of University of Kentucky and President of GlobalAgRisk. Since 1997, Dr. Skees has worked in over ten emerging or developing economies, with recent and ongoing work that includes a World Bank project developing a new livestock insurance product in Mongolia; a USAID project using weather index insurance to hedge portfolio risk for microfinance entities in Peru; and an Inter-American Development Bank project using index insurance to hedge irrigation risk and facilitate water markets in the Rio Mayo irrigation district of Mexico. He has recently returned from a trip to China, Mongolia and Vietnam where he is consulting on risk transfer projects. He has written critiques on the potential application of insurance to such emerging crises as Avian Influenza.

Dr. Skees presented a brief overview of indexed-based insurance—how it works and its potential application for managing risk in developing country contexts and he illustrated this overview with examples from his ongoing projects.