20 years of the Microinsurance Compendium

Episode overview

We open the series where it all began. Craig Churchill edited the 2006 compendium, a landmark effort to map an emerging field, document what worked, and challenge practitioners and policymakers to rethink how insurance could serve low-income populations. Six years later, he co-edited Volume II with Michal Matul.

In this episode, Jack Farren sits down with Craig Churchill to reflect on the journey of both volumes: the vision behind them, the needs the sector faced at each moment, the predictions that held and those that didn’t, and the case studies that went on to prove the model at scale. Craig Churchill also looks at how dramatically the landscape has changed since 2006, what has stayed constant, and what he would prioritise in a third volume written today.

This conversation sets the foundation for the rest of the series, which features compendium authors, organisations profiled in the original case studies, and emerging voices across the sector.

Episode themes

The 2006 genesis: the moment and the need that prompted the first compendium

The 2012 inflection point: what changed in six years to warrant a second volume, and the new questions it set out to answer

Predictions and core concepts: which ideas proved prescient, which played out differently than expected, and what still holds true

The case studies that scaled: which organisations featured across both volumes went on to genuinely prove the model

Twenty years of field evolution: what is unrecognisable today, and what has stayed the same

The 2026 chapter: what a Volume III should focus on, and the most urgent conversation the sector needs to have now

About our guest

Craig Churchill is Chief of the ILO’s Social Finance Programme and Team Leader of the ILO’s Impact Insurance Facility. His work focuses on how financial services and policies can achieve social objectives. He edited Protecting the Poor: A Microinsurance Compendium (2006) and co-edited Microinsurance Compendium Volume II (2012) with Michal Matul.

Episode overview

In 2007, Pioneer, a commercial insurer founded in Manila in 1954, set out to sell insurance “in sachet form, in bite-sized affordable chunks for the underserved and unserved.” Volume II of the compendium documents two of its early experiments: Sparxx, a prepaid savings-and-insurance card, and the OFW Savers and Wellness Club, which covered the families of overseas Filipino workers. That same year, Pioneer began a partnership with CARD MRI, the Philippines’ largest microfinance group. It rested on a promise no other insurer would make: claims settled within five days. The partnership grew into CARD Pioneer Microinsurance Inc. (CPMI) and became one of the largest microinsurance businesses in the world. It went from 20,000 lives covered in 2008 to close to 37 million microinsurance enrollments as of 2025.

Episode themes

In this episode, Jack sits down with Lorenzo to tell that story in order:

• The early sachet products
• The 1-3-5 claims promise
• A flagship product that started losing money and had to be redesigned Typhoon Haiyan, when claims paid door-to-door became the strongest marketing the business ever had

• Rebuilding the company around its customers
   

About our guest

Lorenzo Chan Jr. is President and CEO of Pioneer Inc., the holding company of the Pioneer Insurance Group and one of the leading non-life insurers in the Philippines. He was previously President and CEO of Pioneer Life. In 2007 he approached Dr. Jaime Aristotle Alip, founder of CARD MRI, and the partnership that followed became CARD Pioneer Microinsurance Inc. in 2013. Lorenzo chaired the Microinsurance Network from 2021 to 2026, the first chair from Asia. He co-wrote Covering Nanay: The Philippine Microinsurance Journey (2024), which won Best Book on Business at the 43rd National Book Awards.