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Intellecap's Microfinance Insights Magazine Volume 5 : Focus On Microinsurance
"Mitigating risks for the poor" in Focus on Microinsurance", Microfinance Insights, Vol. 5, December 2007, Intellecap
"Microfinance Insights" devotes this volume to Microinsurance. The magazine contains articles by worldwide experts, gathered at the Third Annual Microinsurance Conference held in Mumbai, India (see G-News N° 3).
Recognizing the role of insurance as a tool in improving the protection of low-income persons against contingencies and as a field of innovation, this volume highlights strategies that would make microinsurance more efficient for beneficiaries and commercially viable for insurers.
In this vein, Michael J. McCord states in an interview that there are three major challenges for the microinsurance sector to develop products that really respond to the needs of clients, to enhance delivery channels and to demystify microinsurance through the education of the population. He also suggests that the partner-agent model is the most promising option for scaling up microinsurance activities.
The question of distribution is also widely discussed in this volume.
In the field of innovations and best practices, the role of intermediaries between insurers and clients, MFIs, community-based organizations, mutual benefit societies and private insurers are analysed in different articles. Regulation and capacity building of intermediary institutions are mentioned as being two major factors of progress to address the vulnerability of the poor to risks.Finally, "Microfinance Insights" dedicates an article to the handbook entitled "Microinsurance Performance Indicators", in which authors develop several indicators to measure the financial performance of programmes aimed at delivering insurance to the poor.
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