Tina Blain:

Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to this ICMIF Webinar, “Impacting the Sustainable Development Goals through mutual microinsurance”.

As a short introduction to today’s webinar, I just like to say that for centuries, mutuals have responded to the needs of their communities. They’ve taken a long term and holistic approach to addressing the risks that face their members. For those that serve low income communities, the challenges that they face are even greater and their strategy goes beyond simply selling insurance. They have a critical role of being the first people to respond in the time of crisis. The Sustainable Development Goals embody the numerous aspects to solve in protection conundrum for the poor. Today’s webinar will explore how these two can be connected.

Our first speaker will be Dr. Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez, a Fellow of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). She is the Principal Investigator and author of the report, “Mutual Microinsurance and the Sustainable Development Goals: An Impact Assessment Following Typhoon Haiyan”. Both the full report and a summary of the report in both English and Spanish can be downloaded from the website. Ana will share with us some key insights from the report and her research demonstrating how mutual microinsurance can impact the SDGs.

Our second and third presenters today are both ICMIF members and microinsurance practitioners. We have Mr. Vasimalai, who is the Executive Director of DAHN Foundation in India. Delfin Benitez, who is the Agri Business Manager for Tajy in Paraguay. Mr. Vasimalai and Delfin Benitez will be sharing with us how their programs which work on the ground directly with vulnerable communities are directly impacting the SDGs. So without further ado, I’d like to hand over to Ana, our first speaker today for her presentation.

Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez:

Thank you, Tina, and for inviting me to share this hour with such impressive panelists. Whenever I have the privilege of talking about this study, I like to renew, on behalf of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability, our deepest gratitude to the people in the provinces of Samar and Leyte in the Philippines who generously open their homes and their lives to us during the study. They answer very personal questions about their finances and their way of life. They had to recall very painful memories of the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan. Many even took a day off work to speak to us. Of course, none of this could have been possible without the committed collaboration of Dr Alip, May, and Lany from CARD MBA, the REMANSI team, and of course ICMIF.

So this study was about CARD MBA. The study had, as well as the impact assessment, we did a very thorough operation and review of the business and how it works and with a great deal of operational details. Today, all of this is available in the report. Today I’m going to focus specifically on the impact assessment because that’s what has given us the knowledge about each Sustainable Development Goals. It was a two-year study that we published in 2019. It was the first study to assign operational insurance functions and outcomes to the delivery of Sustainable Development Goals targets, not just of neutral microinsurance or insurance, even any kind of insurance had never been done before in an impact assessment in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Because of these, as this was the first time that such impact assessment was done, we invested a great deal of time developing the right methodology. That in itself took one year, during which we analyzed previous microinsurance impact assessments that had been done as well as microinsurance data collection and assessment techniques. We are adapted them to the Sustainable Development Goals. So we did an initial survey of 120 households to inform the development of the questionnaire and a final survey of 160 households.

We also went back to the field several times to test further any piece of data that reveal any incongruencies. Yes, indeed the questionnaire had 125 questions per household and the results are fully available on our website. Today I’m just going to give a very brief overview of what we obtained, but all the data is publicly available. So with the questionnaire, you’ll see this.

So the questionnaire was divided in three parts. Across the sections, the first one that we have here in this slide was testing mutual microinsurance at the time of crisis, in this case was the Typhoon Haiyan.

We divided his questions into clusters of general questions such as say, their losses, the purchase power with the payout, help available, then the questions on the claim process, how difficult or easy it was for them to make the pay the claim. Resilience, again, a spectrum here of questions across accommodation, children going back to school or not, recovery methods, and the value of insurance. So the other advantages that they saw in insurance during the time of crisis, even if they had no payout. These are the worst impacted, which I will come back in a moment, goal by goal.

Before that, I just wanted to introduce you to the second part of the questionnaire, which was mutual microinsurance at normal time. So what happens when there is no payout? Did people really value the insurance? Did it make any difference to their lives and in particular, the mutual side? Again, we divided them into general questions, questions about the policy itself. The risk behavior, how having insurance in normal times affects the risk behavior. Again, these are the goals impacted. The third part of the questionnaire was based on the five pillars of mutual microinsurance that the International Association of Insurance Supervisors identified as very special features that only mutuals have in relation to anybody else offering insurance,

These are membership democracy created to serve a defined group solidarity and not for profit. So I look forward now to sharing with you in more detail what we obtain from this very large assessment, the 125 questions. Just to clarify, we looked into life insurance. Philippine law does not allow mutuals to underwrite non life products. So CARD MBA, as a group, sorry. CARD as a group does offer non life insurance through a partnership with a commercial insurer. We explained as well in the report how that works.

But in the field of assessment, we focus specifically on CARD MBA products on the mutual side. Just briefly, CARD MBA is part of a group of companies called CARD MRI that delivers services to the low income sector customers during the micro finance part of the group with a credit or savings product. Then as a compulsory requirement, they acquire life insurance by becoming members of the mutual, of CARD MBA. Then the mutual becomes the backbone of the entire group and the way it’s organized.

I will particularly come back to this aspect of how the members are organizing community centers up to 30 policyholders in just Goal 4. Before that, the goal that we saw, the next goal that we saw impacted was goal three, health and wellbeing which was mainly impacted through the solidarity of the mutual. So members get free medical checkups and discounted medicine and access to a network of trusted health care providers as part of being members of the mutual. Now this is a very special goal for just reveal a lot of interesting data in our assessment. As I mentioned just a moment ago, an outstanding feature of the way this mutual is organized is the members organizing themselves in community centers of up to 30 policyholders. The mutual has a network of over 100,000 centers across the Philippines.

In many of these cases, it’s actually the policyholder’s houses. They met once a week. They collect payments, they give feedback on products and services. They learn about disaster risk reduction. This is done on a weekly basis. We have witnessed these during our research in Tacloban. It’s the most remarkable experience of community building around the insurance product. The following goal is well this is another striking goal in how it just gets impacted with the mutual maker insurance in the context that we assessed it, the empowerment of women.

They become economic participants in their households through access to loans and through insurance, through the weekly meetings. They have the option of being trained as entrepreneurs, as being recipients of scholarships. They become leaders in their community through volunteer positions. This is something that when they spoke to us, they value very much, just having a position of responsibility in their community. Of course, participants in the institutional governance of the mutual, if they get elected to the board, the next goal impacted is Goal Number 8, so decent work and economic growth. This particularly, we think the Sustainable Development Goals, the Goal Number 8 is the house of insurance. It’s where specifically insurance is mentioned. It includes of course the payouts and the non payouts. We were very interested in analyzing both parts equally. The payouts, of course, in this case was in the context of Typhoon Haiyan.

We assessed in the study how people who had this product, this insurance product recovered in comparison to those who belong to CARD MBA but did not have a payout because luckily not a member of their family died. Also we compare it with a people who had no insurance at all. So the people who had insurance payouts, with the very quick validation process, the mutual offers to their members. They were able to get the straight away back into rebuilding their businesses and their homes. Interestingly, rebuilding their businesses was a top priority for them. Those who did belong to CARD MBA, but did not have a payout, also offer just an empowering information about the role belonging to this network, this community network had given them. It had given them the key tool to know exactly what to do in times of crisis. They belong to the financial system, they knew what products they could access to recover faster.

Also, while they waited for just emergency loans to be approved to them, they also knew, close members of their community with whom they meet on a weekly basis in these community centers I just mentioned. So they knew who to get help from to be able to survive just before they could access their own loans or as well in this case, international aid as well and national aid played an important role. That was during the recovery of Typhoon Haiyan. But also we were very interested in knowing what people thought of a mutual microinsurance when they had no payout benefits. Because let’s think that life insurance, most of these members, they go through their life without having to make a claim. We wanted to know, is this something that they … Still even without being able to make a claim, is this something that they value?

The response was overwhelming. As I said, we have the exact percentages in our website, feeling more secure, increased community support and collaboration, improving financial knowledge, home access, the knowledge that they get weekly basis on disaster risk reduction, and particularly financial knowledge, feeling the members reacted in a very just positive way about how empowered they felt by the fact that they could on a weekly basis have access to informing themselves further about what is possible for them and for their circumstances.

Also advantages such as paying for children’s education, having the security of their lives being insured, they felt that they could a risk more and perhaps get a loan, whether you pay their children in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise if they didn’t know that that kind of facility was not going to be repaid if worse happened to the parents.Of course, understanding insurance and the mutuals, a sharing was also very valued.

The next goal, reduced inequalities. This is where regulation, financial regulation, including insurance regulation sits. This is not something that we asked policyholders about but it’s something that very clearly came impacted with our work with CARD MBA because the mutual has a very long history of collaborating with the Philippine regulator. As many of you know, a mutual microinsurance regulation is not available in many jurisdictions.

So the next goal, Goal 11. Specifically, these five pillars of mutuals that I was mentioning earlier, the solidarity pillar, the created to serve a defined group, democracy, not for profit, member ownership is something that we allocated, the results of that, we allocated them to Goal 11 and to Goal 16. In Goal 11, particularly what made their communities more inclusive, thanks to having the mutual operation with them, the solidarity pillar, the member’s weekly education, as I mentioned.

The community have the disaster relief operation. This is something that the CARD group offers their members when they are hit by a disaster. On a regular basis, not just when Typhoon Haiyan or any other typhoon, they get extra help, which they are able to distribute very quickly thanks to having various strong community networks already in place from the week to week operation. Then created itself a defined group, definitely. Community centers, volunteers, people, different policy holders, if they are interested, they can become the center chief, the treasurer, the secretary, they all contribute to validating claims. This is something as well that came as a very important part of their mutual identity, to protect their own money and the community money, the insurance pool money, because they knew they belong to all of them. So claims validation was a strong feature. The trust and the feeling that their needs are being prioritized by the mutual and they are able to communicate them on a weekly basis in the meetings.

Goal 13, yes, this goal connects to what I’ve previously spoke about in relation to Typhoon Haiyan and how the recovery, how the community networks help in the recovery, the pay outs, fast claims validation, the aid being delivered. Of course, risk reduction. This is in normal times, the members can prepare and especially this is something that the mutual CARD MBA has the sense, the experience of Typhoon Haiyan is something that they have improved substantially and is to really be very active participants, almost partners with the government in getting their communities and their members a fully warned about. So these, the perils, natural hazards that are under way but also what to do and first of all, how to save their lives if that is on the way.

The goal 16, a very special goal for mutuals and for mutual microinsurance is. It’s all of these three pillars of member ownership, of democracy, and not for profit. The members select the Board of Trustees, they participate in policymaking. They give weekly a feedback and especially they feel active protectors of the insurance pool to which they contribute.

Finally, goal 17. This is to encourage and promote public and private or civil society partnerships, very much at the center as well of how CARD MBA works in order to serve their own people and has established a lot of many partnerships across regulation, distribution networks, and capacity building. This is very much an advantage of aligning an organization with the Sustainable Development Goals. It will speak a common language to be able to establish these kind of partnerships.

Just finally, this is a page from a our report that I just wanted to quickly share with you. Once we obtain all the information on the policyholder share with us plus our own operational analysis of the business, we’re very aware of the impact assessments are very difficult. They are very costly, costly. At all times, we have in mind to think about easy practical ways that could be used in other studies by other organizations that would like to measure their impact on the Sustainable Development Goals.

So this is page 49 of the report and it offers a list of established operational and social indicators for microinsurance, combined with the specific ones that we found for the five pillars of mutual operations. We selected them in relation to those Sustainable Development Goals for any possible future use. So this is it for me from now. Thank you very much. I really look forward to the discussion.

Tina Blain:

Thank you very much for your presentation. It really is a fantastic piece of work that you and your colleagues have done. It is the first time that anybody has looked at specifically how mutual microinsurance is uniquely impacting the SDGs. So we’re very thankful to you and your colleagues for the effort that you’ve put into producing this comprehensive report.

We have had a question come in about where you can find it. Where you went to register for this webinar, you will be able to find the link to download the report and both the summaries. But also, please just email us if you can’t find it, and we’ll make sure that it’s sent to you.

Moving on, I’m delighted to welcome Mr. Vasimalai, who is the Executive Director of DHAN Foundation in India to present. Mr. Vasimalai, the floor is yours.

M P Vasimalai:

Thank you so much. Good afternoon to everyone. Our work is an integral segment of savings, credit, and also remittance and also insurance, pension and digital transaction. It is an integrated program of SCRIPT. The SCRIPT stands for savings, credit, remittance, insurance, and pension, and the digital transaction. Our mutuality is an integral part of this.

As an institution, we have a philosophy of giving back to the society. We as a nonprofit, we are an enabler. We are an enabler of creating a sustainable socio capital of people institution, from the poor segment or vulnerable segment or disabled segment. With all those vulnerable segment, we work in numbers. It started in 97. Our core purpose is poverty eradication. Poverty eradication, not just reduction alone. Also we work on some kind of health security and promoting democratic institution to make their own decision. It’s following a Gandhian principle of Community Swaraj. It’s basically the community self manages on its own. We really promote a lot of thematic institution, I’ll come a little later, our core of our DHAN’s work is building insulation, which is really for generation. It’s not just kind of target, it’s another kind of a project.

This is how we operate. In fact, DHAN really creates nested institution, people institution with the ownership, not just people participation. Here, they make decisions. The direct democracy is followed in that, the primary groups. There are groups of self-help groups, inter mutuality of 15 to 20 members. They really make a decision for themself. So no other people make decisions. They are really federated, and they’re a federated as a federation mutual where they really run many programs that whole nested institution as a center.

We are really having a lot of thematic integration on community banking, on water, on agriculture, and also on the climate change coastal programs and we have a list of program which are our thematic interventions, that is a layer. The next layer is our SPICE, specialized institution for community empowerment. This is a vertical which deepens after us, the community nested institution. The people mutual is one of its kind, for federation for the insurance programs. Similarly, we have programs on SUGAM, which is a healthcare advancement, a primary health care and community health care, which is also operated.

The next layer is our central office, which has different wings of administration, then we are also networked with international institution, like ICMIF, but also Microinsurance Association, many network institutions, we are part of that. This is our approaches. The organizer, community, sustainable community for people institution for generations. This is the core of our philosophy and really our adaptation of appropriate technology to the poorer segment through a thematic intervention. We do the kind of mainstreaming collaboration. So with the mainstreaming collaboration also we do.

So this is our reach at a glance where really number of states are really around 14 states work. We work very extensively into their processes, where we are really working around two million families. Our savings is also really given, as I said, we can really go through and also we work with the banks, mainstream banks.

Our self-help groups directly works with the banking process. That’s how our whole, and also we have a number of lives covered under social insurance program also. Our people mutual is now around 0.3 million. We are also working with government entitlement programs for the community to really get access for that. So we also have a pilot crop mutual, with EBISA, with an inclusive blockchain insurance using space assets.

Impacting SDGs. So I think as a kind of institution, which is really operating as a people institution. So we address directly three SDGs. One SDG, reducing inequality is core of our philosophy. So all of our program is reducing inequality. That’s how the community themselves declared they are out of poverty. So out of 2.6 million, 3 million people, nearly 1.5 million people self declared they are out of poverty. They also have a social security to 3.6, 4 million policies.

Basically, these inclusive insurance provides a safety net and breaks the vicious cycle of poverty. It prevents a debt trap. Otherwise, always when emergency, people go for a loan, and they are in many decades of their life, they’re in a debt trap. It also sustains livelihoods. So unless these risks are really covered by our insurance, and the livelihoods really are at the stake. Then it also supports other right to equal access to all opportunities for these people. Social protection and safety nets are really there by the community themselves. Use of technology is also very much space is available there. So zero hunger, poverty eradication is our thing and also that food security is done through our agriculture program for their own available lands, our landless people, their household income’s to take care of their stocks.

We do our local food production system and also improves the lending opportunity, encourages investment in agriculture. These people institution, most of them are women-run institution and give us space for leadership. All women conceive with adequate nutrients, women in agriculture contribute a greater global food security. There are a lot of farmer’s producer organization, which now, it’s more. They really run poultry, dairy goats, as a kind of individual activity, which are really federated and grouped for input marketing, output marketing. These are some of the activities for that.

The health insurance is the community-ran, so mutual-ran health insurance program, which has a greater really risk buffering in that, all health services. They also gone through the screening, early screening for non communicable diseases and their health seeking behavior gives a yearly diagnosis and to save them from calamities.

It’s a mainly preventive activities and community health is really very much there. The community themselves are involved in reducing their malnutrition at the adolescent level as well as the child’s eye level. It’s also promoting in terms of really building immunity during these COVID times, it’s really helpful to really get immunity too against this COVID virus. It’s also a curative health programs. Insurance is also for primary care and secondary care and also tertiary care. This insurance also has cashless services through collaborative process with the private hospital as well as with the other government services, it’s real big. It also reduces their health expenditure to great extent.

Always, we really go for a sustainable behavioral change, communication material, which really says why and how they can really do in a sustainable way as a behavioral change. This gender equality, there is inclusive insurance brings that otherwise precedent of our self-help group order, really responsible for insurance. They really make all types of incidences, not only like of women as well as their spouse, and also their health insurances. They really go for a combo of products themselves.

This gives a greater access for a safety net at their doorstep, protects women against the devastating effects of gender related health risk. They influence our member as well as spouse, and also the family focus, yet the family focus is a greater part of this activity. Risk prevention, risk reduction and risk theory and also risk kind of transfer also happening in this. Immediately when there is a person who’s died, our group moves there, and with cultural practices for funeral expenses, and ensuring the claim is used. It’s not just to stop with bill.

How this bill is really in place with the family to really address the risk of their children’s education. So that it is really followed through until its final utilization and to address the risk. These insurances help girl child, higher education, and asset creation in the name of women. Definitely this helps in the SDG goal of 16, where peace and security and sustainable institution, these institutions are for generation. This really creates a livelihood, I think, during this pandemic and a disaster time, their livelihoods are affected fully or partially, and these livelihoods are really again, recovered back.

Now they are really going through this COVID second wave where their loved one really makes them to relay or their livelihood affected. During that time, their alternative livelihoods as secondary activities and supporting their social enterprises to really fight against the very risk. It really reduces or really eradicates child labor. So this financial inclusion, not only for insurance and for banking, and digital transaction makes the people really more helpful for them. In livelihood and enhancement through farmer producer, organization and social enterprises, that’s really build them in addressing the risks.

They are under their own ownership for generation. They really have their own governance structure, the DAHN role is to really enable it, to really make people to really build their capacities. The claim utilization monitoring is very, very strong in this mutual. The climate action, I think the climate adaptation processes, this insurance really gives under disaster. They also create a disaster revolving fund to really address collectively also, whenever a disaster comes because of the mutuality, the first response comes from the community themselves. So when there is some flood or a drought is coming, the community, the Federation of Mutual respond to them. They’re really directly involved in that rescue as well as in that relief operation. To sustain them, linked up with the banking loan system so that they really quickly recover from the shocks.

It’s a comprehensive insurance products for both life, non life also it’s offered. Non financial risk management practice are more. In agriculture, we go for summer clothing, sea treatment and create water bodies to really give protective irrigation so that the crop failure is really avoided and drought tolerant crops as a DAHN. The non financial risks management are so many. Disaster risk is at a community level has been created, as I said earlier, during the cyclone, during flood time. They respond immediately with the collaboration with the government services. The risk resilience is provided with a credit support and also their savings also act as a buffer for the risk.

When they really see the partnership, there is an inclusive Mutual Insurance product, an institution by the community there. They really work mainly with the vulnerable people institutions. They also work as a mainstream institution as a backup support for the mutual ready. So all these stages are interrelated. It’s not like a standalone, one is really leading to another one. I think the fact of imposing citizen mutuality is really creating an excellent method in the community.

I think because of our experience, now central banks called the Reserve Bank of India, now comfortable for the next three years to work with the DAHN to reach out for incidents recursive program, which is called Center for Financial Literacy for at least about a million families are going to cover in the next three years.

I think that is through sustainable behavioral change, communication with digital media. We also create a creative partnership for inclusive, it’s going in a big way with ICMIF. With ICMIF, where we really have a very large list, one million in five years’ time. This is really a lot of opportunity for scaling up. Scaling up to reach out another couple of millions through this inclusive insurance is there. The risk of the scalable model to build direct relationship between SDG and mutual insurance like the study, which it was really presenting, I think that kind of things also should be continued. I think this inclusive mutual insurance really protects people and localizing the SDGs. The SDGs, it’s a country-wise target, but how do you localize that SDDs to the community themselves? I think that is a kind of good challenge, and which DAHN is enabling them to address that. I would like to thank ICMIF for this kind of scaling up with us. Thank you so much.

Tina Blain:

Thank you very much, Mr. Vasimilai. We can really see from your presentation that DAHN is is really living the SDGs and empowering the local communities to take control of their lives and livelihoods. We understand you’re currently in lockdown. So we really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with us today and present your own insights with us. We know the situation in India is extremely challenging at the moment and organizations like DAHN Foundation, who are at the front line are crucial and invaluable at this time. So thank you very much for the work that you are doing. Thank you. Moving on to our third and final speaker today, we have Mr. Delfin Benitez, who is the Agri Business Manager for Tajy in Paraguay. So Mr. Benitez, you have the floor. Thank you very much.

Delfin Benitez:

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you Tina. I thank the organization on behalf of Tajy Insurance Company of Paraguay, a cooperative company. I want to briefly present to you the result of a work of years of thinking and developing it in the country in the insurance market. We have been working for 11 years with an agricultural risk mitigation tool. We know that agriculture is one of the human activities that are highly dependent on climate. Historically, the segment of production had not been able to gain access to any kind of climate risk mitigation product because of the small size of their productive units.

So we embarked on a very important project to develop an agricultural insurance model which is innovative to the insurance market to offer coverage to these small holders. So after this initiative, on our part, three additional insurance companies joined in a consortium to adopt another climate risk mitigation tool according to the productive reality that we have in our country in production. Well, basically, the Paraguayan law, one of its law, 60 to 86 Article V defines families smallholder agricultural as all rural activities performed by family labor that produce food for self consumption and to bring an income. If we look at the distribution of farmers per farm in the pyramid, according to the last census performed in the country in 2008, there are 117,000 farmers that work the land in less than one hectare and up to five hectares. We did a new segmentation because we felt that this is an even more vulnerable sector even within fee, from a small holding sector, families smallholders produce food for self consumption.

Family members work the land, women and men. They play a very important role paddock wide to produce a full 97% of vegetables, particularly tomatoes come from this productive sector, 94% of beans, cassava, 93% of bananas and 53% more or less of sugarcane come from this very vulnerable sector, very important, then neglected for many years. In this country, a pending debt on the part of all of these sectors. The crops that these small productive units produce are for self consumption and to bring in some income, beans, cassava, corn for self consumption and to bring in income, sesame seed and other.

We have analyzed all of these years of loss. We have seen that the major risks that affect this productive sector is a drought during this summer and frosts, which are very intensive in the winter months in Paraguay. Some localized events like hail and frost also have an effect even if not so strongly, more isolated and less recurrent. The effects caused on these small farmers, that is the loss of production, afford the risk that a significant loss of their income and their assets. This leads them to abandon agriculture, which is what they know how to do in the country. As a result, they begin to migrate, small farmers migrate to the capital city. That creates a very serious problem for the country. As I have mentioned, therefore, it becomes a pending debt.

We know that climate change variability affects food security and the availability access and the use of nutrients. We have seen through studies done by the World Bank that there’s been loss sustained of $109 million by this productive sector due to drought and more than $23 million lost recently in 2017 due to droughts and frosts. So this motivated us as a company as an insurance company that belongs to the cooperative sector. To develop this, so you’re in for tool.

We have designed a coverage model together with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank, an index of drought severity, a climate index, a tool that allows us to mitigate the risk of drought on a sector, monitor together with small holders, companies, financial entities, and the insurance company, we are all stay informed.

The limitation of this tool is the coverage of one single systemic event. The insurance for agriculture, which is fought, then other insurance companies have joined us together with the incumbent government. We have adopted another similar tool, which is the yield index that allowed us to define based on statistical production data or by that segment defined a coverage level of not more than 65%. We were able to do this together with all the companies and the government. It is important to underscore that after the severity index, the government joined us in this model because it allowed our company and the country to broaden the coverage zones, the risks of coverage and the number of beneficiaries, which is the ultimate purpose of this tool.

The result of the implementation of these models, these two models led us to make commitments with cooperatives and with government agencies that formerly did not know this tool with these characteristics. Unfortunately, very few sectors of the government were familiar with it as an essential climate risk transfer tool. We have established 25 agro meteorological stations that now report information to an important database, this belongs to the company. We have trained more than a 1900 growers. We have included training for technicians, for the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. That is a ministry that is in charge of providing training to small productive units. We have given out materials, teaching materials with illustrations to strengthen those capabilities.

After three years of work, we have been able to produce an insurance policy for small holders that unfortunately before now, did not have access to it. We have insured 32,000 farmers and have covered more or less 60,000 hectares. As a result of three years of work, joint work, with both modalities of covered, we have paid out insurance to more than 2,575 small growers.

We believe that our contribution as a company in the insurance market in the country, to this very important productive segment is giving protection to the producer in the face of adverse events that allow them to stabilize their income and assets. It promotes and protects production of food and makes it possible for them to gain access to credit because financial institutions couldn’t give them financing because they didn’t have any collateral, and this tool allows it.

Particularly they have peace of mind, which is an intangible value. We believe and we have analyzed that the development of this tool, the delivery of it to these small productive sectors contribute to four of the SDGs, reducing poverty, zero hunger, health and wellbeing and work and economic growth. This is practically what we have been doing in the last few years and a small contribution. I know we’re certain that much remains to be done still as a country and as a company. But the contribution by the company in developing this model and with our investment was very important, and we are very satisfied because finally, we have been able to deliver a climate risk transfer for this very important productive sector. Thank you very much.

Tina Blain:

Thank you very much, Delfin.

The agricultural sector is clearly a sector that is impacted by climate change very severely. It’s very challenging to provide risk protection to that sector. So it really is a great testament to to you and your team for what you’ve achieved so far through the program. So it’s great to hear. Thank you very much.

So we are almost out of time. I’ll take the liberty of asking one question, but I will say to all the other questions that have come in, we will put your questions to the speakers and get back to you with a written reply. So if you have any more, please put them in the Q&A. I would just like to ask Mr. Vasimalai, if I may, and Delfin. In terms of your programs, and what needs to be done to be able to scale your projects further and have a bigger impact on the SDGs? Mr. Vasimalai, perhaps I can ask you that question first, if I may.

M P Vasimalai:

Yeah, the impact is phenomenal. It’s reducing inequality and really having a risk mitigation, risk assessment is very high, to really scale it up to reach out to all the poorest of the poor. We need our kind of collaborative processes to impact on the … I think the model itself is an empowering model for the community to have some mutuality and self help, and it’s a self sustainable. They themselves really manages the whole process. But in India, the challenge is still the mutual is not really … Regulated framework is not there. They say that the insurance is regulated. The insurance agencies, not the insurance itself. Our model of self help group that’s there, they parade themselves. They really run this mutuality on day one. There is no legal regulatory framework now available in India.

Tina Blain:

Thank you very much. Delfin, what needs to be done for him to be able to scale up the program?

Delfin Benitez:

It is important a target to highlight the first, the first analysis of the climate, the index, we develop data to be able to market it collectively without a government subsidy for the agricultural insurance. To penetrate in the country, we need the support of the state. We need the subsidy of the state. This is how we were able to have a conversation with the different ministers, through adverse alternative. So to answer your question, for this program to move forward, we need the availability of more financial resources from the government to subsidize these programs. 100% of the premiums are paid for by the government. All the payoffs are in the hands of the producer.

Tina Blain:

Thank you very much. I will squeeze in one question for Ana if I may, on the report. So how would you like this study to be followed up by ICMIF members and members involved in mutual microinsurance?

Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez:

Difficult question, Tina. I could say with action. I could say the other thing is Sustainable Development Goals framework is something that proved really worth the product of a two year study, it aligns very well with the mutual ethos, the mutual five distinctive pillars and the Sustainable Development Goals speak to each other naturally.

So it’s a very helpful way of measuring the environmental, social and governance side of mutuals. The world and governments and companies, NGOs, donor agencies, they are increasingly aligning themselves with the SDGs. They offer a helpful framework and common language to develop important partnerships that are usually necessity in this kind of community programs. Definitely in the context of the climate emergency as we are getting ready for the next climate summit in November, COP 26, which is going to be a major landmark in the long in the low carbon resilient economy, mutual microinsurance is highly needed for a just transition. Impossible to think of a fair world without a mutual microinsurance.

Tina Blain:

Thank you, Ana. Thank you to everybody, as I mentioned the questions that have been submitted and we haven’t got to, we will provide a written answer to. This concludes our webinar today. So just thank you very much, a big thank you to all the speakers who have joined us, for your insightful presentations today, for the interpretation. Then thank you very much for all the attendees for joining us.

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