Call for proposals

Success stories and lessons learnt in closing the insurance gap and increasing outreach. This topic explores how insurance providers can successfully enter and operate within the inclusive insurance market. The protection gap issue in the world and the region should be addressed in greater depth and detail. Understanding the reality is therefore essential in order to commit to a paradigm shift. Key areas of interest include:

• Success factors: Which critical success factors within the ecosystem are essential for business models to be considered successful? How should success in inclusive insurance be defined?
• Distribution channels: What are the most successful distribution strategies and what has failed, and why for both? Which potential distribution channels are we not tapping into?
• Incentives: What incentives exist to invest in the inclusive insurance market, and how do these incentives evolve over time?
• Strategy: How can insurers, including their shareholders, integrate inclusive insurance into their overall strategy?
• Vision: How can a long-term vision help to create future markets?
• Partnerships: Who are the possible partners? How can partnerships accelerate the delivery of products and services to low-income markets, and how can such partnerships be proactively managed?

The focus should also extend to analysing the inclusive insurance value chain, including distribution partners, brokers, insurers and reinsurers, governments and enabling institutions. Any proposals on this topic, along with the resulting presentations, should be based on quantitative data covering more than three years.

Efficient distribution and management systems remain a key barrier to closing the insurance gap. However, digital platforms, AI satellite technologies and new data aggregators are increasing the potential for digital financial services to reach customers who were previously excluded. Key areas of interest include:

• Technological impact: What are the benefits and challenges of using technology for distribution, risk profiling, pricing, claims handling and product design?
• Cost implications: What are the financial considerations for implementing these technologies?
• High-touch solutions: To what extent can high-touch solutions be complemented or replaced by low- or no-touch solutions?
• How can AI-driven underwriting models be adapted to serve low‑income customers with limited formal data histories?
• Data and risk modelling: What effective tools are there for data collection and analysis (including weather data) and risk modelling, and how are these applied in developing markets?
• How can advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain and the IoT be applied to increase operational efficiency, enhance the client experience in inclusive insurance, and close the insurance/protection gap?
• What is the role of insurtechs, and what are their responsibilities?

The conference organisers are particularly interested in proposals from fintech technology companies. Submissions should include case studies that provide clear examples of results achieved in reaching low-income markets. In particular, we encourage case studies from Africa.

The above topics focus on developing new inclusive insurance products and partnerships. Submissions should explore ways in which products and partnerships can be structured to increase outreach and coverage, while offering strong value to the target market. Key areas of interest include:

• Product expansion: How can we expand our product range to address key issues?
• Telemedicine integration: How can telemedicine improve access to healthcare and insurance?
• Health innovations: What comes after hospital cash? How can the needs of vulnerable groups, such as people with disabilities, be met?
• Migrant and remittance solutions: How can we reach new customers, such as migrant workers, and capitalise on remittances?
• Government programmes and partnerships: How can we accelerate the expansion of government and social protection programmes, and how can insurance companies collaborate 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 reached millions of customers that traditional banking could not, establishing itself as an important distribution channel for insurance. At the same time, access to savings provides an important additional layer of risk management. As well as providing their clients with affordable risk management, microfinance institutions are increasingly recognising the need to protect their own loan portfolios against major shocks. The organisers are interested in hearing success stories from microfinance organisations that effectively offer insurance to their clients. Key areas of interest include:

• Challenges and opportunities: What are the main challenges of offering insurance to microfinance clients? In what ways has financial inclusion become a key driver and essential enabler of insurance inclusion? How can microfinance organisations recognise the business case for offering insurance alongside their other services?
• Partnerships: How do you identify and select the right risk taker, and how do you manage partnerships successfully?
• Institutional resilience: What measures have they taken to protect their loan portfolio against major catastrophes?
• Combining financial services: How have they successfully combined different financial services to increase customer resilience?

In light of climate change, it is vital to understand and reduce risks, and to combine macro-, meso- and micro-level climate and disaster risk finance, insurance and social protection. This will strengthen the resilience of vulnerable and poor communities, as will the development of index-based and other solutions. The organisers are interested in the latest developments in insurance schemes, including parametric (index-based) and other products focused on climate and catastrophic risks, which aim to protect households, farmers and MSMEs against natural disasters and pandemic risks. Key areas of interest include:

• Scaling insurance: What is required to expand the availability of insurance against climate and disaster risks? Which models have achieved scale and financial sustainability while providing demonstrable customer value?
• Parametric and index insurance expansion: What lessons have been learnt from scaling up index-based products, particularly in the context of agriculture and climate risk? How can improvements in product design reduce basis risk and increase trust and uptake?
• Role of … : What role should governments, international organisations, development banks, UN agencies, the private sector and investors play in mitigating risk, preventing loss, developing insurance and blended finance solutions, and facilitating the expansion of climate and disaster risk insurance?
• Public-private partnerships (PPPs): What are the key factors for success in PPPs?
• Value chain integration: How can insurance along the value chain help increase protection against climate and disaster risks?
• Anticipatory action: How can we expand pre-financing covers to counter the risks of impending catastrophes?
• What constitutes successful risk mitigation and loss prevention efforts, including blended finance solutions?

The organisers welcome examples of how insurance has gone beyond smallholder farmers to include other affected communities.

Understanding the challenges and analysing the demand for insurance in emerging economies enables insurance providers and policymakers to design more effective and sustainable microinsurance initiatives that meet the needs of underserved populations. However, a lack of understanding of demand and customer needs remains a key barrier for insurance providers looking to increase insurance coverage. Key areas of interest include:

• Demand analysis: How can successful demand analysis interventions be designed and implemented? How can we evaluate whether products are meeting customers’ needs and determine when adaptation is necessary?
• 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.

To identify and overcome the barriers to market development, it is essential that policies, action plans and national strategies which include all relevant stakeholders are put in place. Regulation plays a key role in this respect. The conference organisers are inviting proposals that examine how governments and insurance supervisors can foster environments that facilitate growth and innovation while maintaining consumer protection. Key questions include:

• What are the different regulatory approaches? Which ones have been successful?
• Advocacy: How are policymakers, regulators and supervisors championing insurance advocacy?
• Best practices: What insights can be gained from international best practice? What are regulators doing to encourage innovation, for example through the use of sandboxes?
• National strategies: What are the key considerations for designing an inclusive national insurance strategy?
• Cross-border cooperation and common regulation: How can countries cooperate to facilitate this? What experiences do regions that currently have common regulation have?
• How can interventions beyond regulation, such as digital public infrastructure or improving the capacities of national industries, spur market development?
• Standalone microinsurance companies: are they satisfying the regulatory policy objectives? Which are key to scaling? What hinders / supports profitability.

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?
• Product design adaptations: What are some successful examples of products that have been adapted to better serve women?
• Distribution through women-led channels: How can insurers make use of these models? What evidence is there of improved outreach, trust and renewal rates?

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

• Financial literacy: Which financial education campaigns have been successful, and what impact have they had on the target population’s culture with regard to risk management and the adoption of inclusive insurance?
• Insurance literacy for digital products: How can insurance literacy be enhanced with regard to digitally enabled products and delivery mechanisms?
• Product awareness: Which campaigns and business models, beyond financial literacy, have effectively boosted product uptake, consumer understanding, and appropriate use?
• Cost-benefit analysis: Provide examples of assessments that demonstrate the effectiveness of the approaches used.
• Consumer protection and trust: In what ways can transparency, simplified policy wording and improved disclosure standards complement financial education efforts?

The organisers are interested in the scientific analysis of inclusive insurance markets. They are inviting empirical, theoretical and policy-oriented papers on topics such as:

• Factors impacting insurance uptake
• The impact of inclusive insurance on welfare gains and financial protection, and its contribution to economic growth and the SDGs
• The effects of inclusive climate risk insurance on food security and resilience
• Enabling regulation: The good, the bad and the missing
• Factors impacting the development, scale and sustainability of inclusive insurance (e.g. innovations, and distribution)
• Inclusive insurance education and awareness raising: What works and what doesn’t?
• Experiences with inclusive health insurance
• Evidence of innovative risk bundling
• Evidence of the impact of innovative methods (e.g. new data modelling or obtaining high-resolution data on renewal rates and baseline risks)
• Successes and failures of technological applications (InsurTech) in inclusive insurance

The organisers are interested in the scientific analysis of inclusive insurance markets. Submissions should clearly articulate implications for practitioners, policymakers or market development. A broad range of research methodologies is welcome, including randomised controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental designs, and qualitative field research.