Vicky Hughes:

Hello, and welcome everybody to this online event organised by the IIC. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to wherever you may be in the world today. My name is Vicky Hughes, and I am Vice President of Membership at ICMIF and I’m delighted to be your moderator today for this UNDP-ICMIF Insurance Innovation Challenge Virtual Event. Now, as you know, at The ICMIF Foundation, we support inclusive insurance programmes to become sustainable, scalable, and impactful. This takes time and commitment as well as building strong community-based infrastructure. And as you know, as mutuals, we do things differently. We build for the long term.

Today’s session will highlight progress from four pioneering IIC projects. We’ll hear directly from our project partners about their achievements, the impact of financial and technical support, and most importantly, the difference these initiatives are making in the lives and livelihoods of policyholders. However, just before we begin, I would like to acknowledge and sincerely thank our donors, many of whom are with us on this call today. Your generosity makes this very important work all possible and that we can see all of our donors, so thank you once again to you all.

Now, I’m delighted to welcome today’s speakers. We have Michael Mugo, MD Designate at CIC Microinsurance Kenya. Michael has over 25 years of experience in the insurance industry.

We’re also joined by Elsie Afonso, Head of Marketing and Customer Experience at CIC Africa Malawi and Project Manager for CIC Malawi’s IIC Project. Elsie is a seasoned marketing professional.

We’re also joined by Savitha Herath, Senior Manager for Human Resources Development at Sanasa Life Insurance Sri Lanka. Savitha has six years experience in insurance and microfinance.

And last but by no means least, we are joined by Jun Jay Perez, Executive Director of MiMAP in the Philippines. With more than 20 years of experience in social development, he is joined by Emma Ongayo, Board President of SEDMFI MBA, MiMAP’s local implementation partner.

Michael Mugo:

Thank you, Vicky. Good morning, good afternoon, and good night all. We’ll go straight to my presentation based on the CIC experience as you are told.

In Kenya, CIC insurance where we are doing microinsurance, and I will start basically presenting on the brief history of our company. Our company is a pan-African insurance enterprise. We say that first and foremost we are a cooperative enterprise and we started in 1968 by basically cooperatives and mainly the coffee-based cooperatives and we have grown from 1968 to a big franchise. Between 2000 and 2012, we were able to demand our businesses as per the requirement of the regulation. 2013 to 2024, we have embarked on rapid expansion and diversification of the company and we went into other markets in Africa as Sudan, Uganda, Malawi. We have also introduced the foundation. We have also introduced the micro-insurance from last year. Right now, we are also having a CIC pharmacy-based care to serve our customers because we are very strong on health products.

And the way we expand as a group, we don’t go to countries to dominate. We go to various countries within Africa to try and introduce a cooperative and mutual insurance model where we partner with them. We provide the expertise and the capital just to make sure that the other countries also grow as we grow. 2025 and beyond, we are looking at now a great era of innovation and digitization and scaling the company, concentrating a lot on embedded insurance, looking at the ecosystem approach where we are able to neutralise our heritage and we are able to neutralise our dynamics to be able to create social impact.

Getting into, that is just our footprint. Again, I’m not focused so much on that that but just to emphasise that in a lot of areas we are dominating in property insurance, in asset management supported by the group.

But allow me now to go straight into the reason why we are here today. Mostly because of microinsurances, inclusive insurance insurance that creates impact. We are a company that is well positioned because of our heritage, our experience, product development in terms of getting into this space. This was informed by the high poverty rate in Kenya, which ranges between that 6% and that 9%, and the low insurance penetration, which is basically about 2.5% utilisation of the mutual market, which commands about a share of about 8%. The need was there that we had a lot of low income households, particularly cooperative members who face various economic shocks.

They have limited access to affordable healthcare, and we are faced with a myriad of problems, particularly climate-related events. We came up with a product and decided to design what we refer to as cooperative care microhealth. That brings health to the doorsteps of the Kenyan populace and this includes a standalone inpatient cover and this also acts as a financial safety net against health-related expenses. And the target market is primarily members of Kenya’s cooperative societies. But after our engagement with IIC and other advisors, the microinsurance team, we agreed that there was need not to expand this so that we could have a bigger reach and a bigger catchment area and therefore now we are doing MFI, that is microfinance institutions. We are also doing groups and the main target now is low income people within the urban areas and also the rural households. Since women are most vulnerable when it comes to some of these shocks, we are focusing a lot on women and providing targeted messaging and of course reach.

The strategy and projected outcomes. One, the strategy was to refer the strong ties with the cooperative movement, concreting the product and also needs a lot of partnerships and collaborations and investment in digital transformation. In the short term, we want to reach about 6,000, but eventually we want to onboard about 200,000 and we also within our ESG policy have decided that we are going to grow microinsurance to 25% of the overall CIC portfolio by 2020.

These particular images just depict the kind of trainings that we’ve been doing, reaching out to members of the cooperative societies and reaching out to the hitherto underserved community communities and for achievements and impacts on forest holders and lives and livelihoods.

By half one 2025, we had already onboarded 751 members and these members have about 1,644 lives with about over 3000 members a trade. So numbers might look more, but in terms of impact is a normal in terms of learnings. For example, the one particular circle called winner’s circle where we have reached a lot of members. It is serving close to about 40,000 members and therefore for us, this is something that has been very phenomenal.

We have key differences in support. In direct funding, a lot of it, part of it coming from CIC group and funding of the technical assistance coming from the IIC, UNDP-ICMIF partnership. We have received a lot of guidance from the team, particularly on human-centric design. We also have been able to strengthen our distribution channels and we are now in the process of scaling up the project.

And also, we have gotten a lot of support from CARD MBA, the team has been there. We also managed to go to Philippines with a lot of learnings and these photos are just a depiction of that partnership, that collaboration, that international collaboration that we have had through ICMIF and through these challenge.

The other important thing is a lot of lessons that we have learned on product innovation. We’ve noted that it is very key, and that one size fits all approach is ineffective, it can’t work. We’ve also learned from this particular project on leveraging existing networks, making sure that to utilise the collaborations that our heritage and also learned that digitization is very, very critical. We also have learned that social impact and business growth can coexist so that you are serving other served and you also looking at scaling up and also issues of sustainability. And it has worked on very well with this project. The expectations on this project, the remainder of this project is that we are going to broaden access and distribution. We are going to enhance digital capabilities and we are going to strengthen partnerships.

And also beyond 2025, 2030, we are looking at significant growth and scaling up expansions of coverage, regional expansions even to other countries so that we are able to also benefit the other countries, the other markets that we are serving. We look forward to also add our ESG policy and agenda. We want to increase the micro insurance policies uptake in CIC group to about 25% of the total portfolio. And this has really helped to build of course on the current strategy that we are developing for the next five years, and we are looking at these as a blue ocean. Thank you very much and I want to stop there, and I want to take it back to Vicky.

Vicky Hughes:

Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you for those insights from Kenya, so over to Elsie now.

Elsie Afonso:

Thank you very much. I’m here to present to you on the Kangachepe Funeral Expense Policy for the Malawi ICMIF project.

I will basically focus on a brief overview of CIC Malawi, the synopsis, customer needs, impact, and of course the future expectations. My colleague from Kenya has already done a very good job in terms of giving a background of CIC in general so I’ll briefly focus on the Malawi business.

CIC Malawi, as per our abbreviation, we are a cooperative insurer and the pioneer and leader in microinsurance in Malawi offering both genuine life insurance products. We’ve actually earned a nation and of course international recognition because of our innovativeness, and of course excellent customer service delivery. On all our touch points we have our head office here in Lilongwe, that’s the central region of Malawi. In Blantyre, the southern region, and of course in Mzuzu, the northern region. And we have another satellite office in the north, that’s Songwe.

And of course we’ve been working also with our partners, some of which are also our shareholders. We have been working closely with the Farmers Union of Malawi, Malawi Union of Savings and Credit Cooperatives, that’s MUSCCO, and of course other circles also. In terms of the snapshot for the Malawi setup, currently in Malawi we have been experienced, of late I should say, we’ve been experiencing natural disasters that are climate-related, so more of the cyclones, the floods, droughts, and also pests and diseases. For us of course, we mainly depend on rain-fed agriculture, and of course we’ve also been hit hard of late by different epidemics and pandemics, more especially malaria, cholera, and of course HIV. In terms of gender-related issues, also our women and of course girls are subjected to a lot of gender-based violence-related issues, so the cases also have been on the rise.

In terms of poverty levels in Malawi, we are the fourth-poorest country in the world whereby 70% of our population are living on less than $2 a day. All these actually attributed to the climate shocks that have been hitting us hard of late, and of course high unemployment levels, and of course the instability of our currency as we have been experiencing high inflation rates and of course depreciation. For the insurance penetration also in Malawi, we have very low insurance penetration levels, less than 3%, and of course very weak disaster preparedness response systems. In terms of the challenges, that also have contributed to that, it’s to do with the low literacy levels, issues of trust as well. People do not trust insurance companies. They feel like they are good, they come smiling when they’re collecting their premiums, but because of lack of understanding of the policy terms and conditions, they feel duped when it comes to claim settlement.

In terms of also affordability, they find the products to be very expensive and so a lot of initiatives being done. And also we appreciate the support we are getting from ICMIF and UNTP because at least now we are able to offer very commensurate premium rates to our customers and also hence improving at least the penetration rates in the country.

In terms of the customer needs, so for the Malawi setup in terms of also in relation to the Kangachepe group funeral expense products, you find that a lot of people experienced actually high funeral costs whenever maybe they lose their loved ones just to cut up for the coffee, transport, food, and of course another burial related. Of course, it’s really a challenge. So all this, as I indicated because of our reliance on agriculture, which is in most cases also affected by the natural disasters. These natural disasters also in one or the other, they contribute also to the increased number of deaths in the country because you find that a lot of people are vulnerable or are living in areas that are mostly affected.

Whenever maybe families experienced death, you find that they are going out to get loans of which the interest also that are chargeable there too. Also in a higher side, others they would opt to sell or maybe their assets just to cover for the costs. All this creates a pressure also on the communities because you’d find that everyone would want to have a very decent funeral or dignified funeral ceremony. But because of now, those particular challenges, I find that people are put to a disadvantage. However, the coming in of the Kangachepe insurance product actually has supported the communities, has brought in some sort of cushion to the people. They are able now to transfer the risk to us as CIC and also be able to pay their premiums which are more affordable.

On our part also, we are ensuring timely payouts using the mobile money platforms just to ensure that we reach out to them as quickly as possible to save the peoples as they are contributions in terms of the premiums. Hence providing them with peace of mind as they are aware that they can be involved in other income generating activities knowing that they are covered by CIC. In order to reach out to our target markets, we are actually working hand in hand with different partners, more especially the community groups including women groups, church associations, the farmer groups or clubs. And also, we are bundling it with other microfinance products. For example, the credit or the loans. For the VSLs, the cooperatives, the circles, and also the MFIs including banks, we are actually pushing this particular product as a matter of bundling it with the credit facility.

In terms of the projected outcomes, we anticipate to say by the end of the project we should recruit 46,000 new policy holders and of course 156,000 lives to be covered. And also, we are anticipating to say we’ll have increased financial resilience on the part of our beneficiaries, and of course enhance our social impact by virtue of our enabling people to have dignified funerals and reduce the debts that they are actually having. In terms of their achievements so far, I would say the gross written premium under our funeral expense package has grown by 37%. In terms of the number of policy holders onboarded, out of a target of 5,000, we have managed to get 6,000 policy holders. And also, out of 5,000 targeted policy holders, we have… Actually, out of 17,000 policy holders, we have managed to reach out to 10,000 policy holders in terms of educating them. When it comes to issues of insurance. For claims, we have also managed to settle 208 claims so far from inception of the projects.

For the impact, direct funding, considering the fact that also CIC is co-funding the project, so we have managed to offer the affordable product to our customers, so hence actually them also being able to manage the premium contributions, operational sustainability. Also, through our contribution to the projects, we are able to cut or cover the and distribution course. We have also expanded our market outreach whereby we have expanded our expansion through the campaigns that we are doing, and of course the businesses that we are closing out there. Customer education also has enhanced, however, through the technical support also we have been getting from ICMIF and of course UNDP, we have managed to learn and also be able to come up with marketing materials in local languages, which is also very key, and also it’s helping us and giving us positive results.

Also, integration of technology when it comes to our distribution as well as maybe payments when it comes to claim settlement. Capacity building also. We have learned a lot from ICMIF, and of course our turnaround times they have also improved. Through the engagements we have had with the team in Philippines, we have learned a lot whereby in terms of the vision and the mission, we have seen that at all levels, this is actually adhered to and people are able to live according to their values. A lot more there in terms of focusing on eradicating poverty, other than just providing insurance services to our customers, and of course the advancement of or use of digital platforms to save our customers.

For the future needs, of course we are looking forward to having support or funding from our well-wishers to ensure that we further enhance our product offerings through research and of course innovation. Also, capacity building, we want to have more engagements so that we enhance our knowledge and even we adjust the way we do things. Digital transformation as well. We want to have well technological, our advanced infrastructure when it comes to technology so that we are also able to save our customers. So far, we’ve learned that when you are distributing microinsurance products, it’s really good to make things simple for the customers because that enhances participation, and also, you know the impact for micro insurance product.

It goes beyond the product offering but rather you touch lives because instead of people now having maybe loans, having that distress, from borrowing or even selling their assets, they’re able to rely on us and that partnership has also actually benefited us in a way because our corporate image also has been enhanced. Partnerships also strengthen delivery. That’s one thing also we have learned out of this particular project, and of course the use of local coordinators when we are distributing our products, something that has been a quick win on our part, so our expectations for the remaining period, we expect to grow our gross return premium.

We expect to enhance our operational efficiency and also establish more strategic partnerships as we go. And also, business sustainability because we know this particular project is profitable, our brand visibility will also be enhanced. And of course, the outreach and enrollment on our insurance programmes will definitely be increased.

For the four-year period, we are looking forward to have an increase in terms of our recruitment, the new policies that will be for the new policy holders that will be on boarded to ensure that it is sustainable. Continue with the programme, and also ensure that even the number of lives will continue to grow. As time goes, that will even also apply on the gross written premiums and of course the profitability of the business. Having reached this far, I don’t know if at all there are any questions or anything, but there’s a video that Alely is to play from that end. Thank you.

Video plays

Vicky Hughes:

Thank you so much Elsie for your update from CIC Malawi. We could move onto Savitha from Sanasa Life Insurance. Would that be all right with you?

Savitha Herath:

Sure, of course.

Vicky Hughes:

Okay, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much.

Savitha Herath:

Very good day to everyone. Hope everyone can see my presentation and that I’m audible. Can I get a small confirmation on that? I’m Savitha Herath from Sanasa Life Insurance and I’ll directly go into my presentation and tell you about the sustainability, scalability, and the impactful things that we have done throughout this project.

To give a brief explanation on to my presentation and my company, we are probably a company with 900 staff members and more than 1,500 sales agent. Especially, I want to mention that here we have, probably say that we have more than 50% of women who are engaged in sales and activities. We have more than 500,000 community reach and we have products starting from in term policies, term assurance, family protections, education plans, retirement plans as well. And especially as we are deriving from the Sanasa societies, Sanasa cooperatives, the trust that people have put on us is huge and the innovations are also moving forward as well.

So if I give about the milestones of the company, our co-founder, our group chairman, our Dr. P.A. Kiriwandeniya started that community development survey in 1989 and with that we formatted a society called ALMAO Society with the leaders of funeral led societies and so on. We could start Sanasa Life Insurance company, Sanasa Insurance Company 2002, but with the government regulation, the company had to segregate into two, into Sanasa General Insurance and Sanasa Life Insurance. So here in this project we are represent the Sanasa Life Insurance.

If I give us a brief explanation about the socioeconomic landscape of Sri Lanka, unfortunately our poverty rate is so high, it’s around 55.7, and out of that 25.9 of the population living below the poverty line as well. Our inflation rates are high, job insecurity rates high and climate disasters as well. There are many issues as a country we are facing currently. And in the big picture, the insurance penetration is very low. And in one hand we can say as a insurance company, we have opportunity to get more, but however the low insurance penetration is one of the main issues that country is currently facing.

Moving on to my next slide, those reasons brought the need of insurance. As Sanasa Life Insurance company, we always want to have every citizen insurance policy, especially the citizens, the Sri Lankans in undeserved market. So business continuity is a risk due to illnesses, disability, and they are limited financial literacy, limited saving habits, and their dependence on informal credits. Those reasons brought the need for the insurance.

So then because of that we saw that opportunity and we developed a product called Labadi. This product is totally catering to women and this product is an endowment policy which has a life and investment part as well. And this product has so much flexibility as well. They can purchase so many rider covers if they want and it could cover spouse and children as well. As I told you, these products is totally tailored for women over 18 years, especially we are catering women in MS, ME sector, micro and small medium sector entrepreneurial women.

These are the project outcomes we agreed upon the project. We got to issue, within two hours issue around 20,000 policies to cover around 60,000 lives, renewal policies around 12,000 and to issue new policies, 8,000 new policies and cover around 24,000 new lives as well. These are the project outcomes that we agreed upon.

Strategy to cater to this particular undeserved market MS, ME entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs is one of the main strategy is to improve the awareness among them about the importance of insurance and the validity of insurance. And so with the Sanasa societies, as we are deriving from Sanasa societies, as about all the shareholders from Sanasa society cooperatives, it’s very easy for us to target the women members within the Sanasa society. We have around 8,000 Sanasa societies in the country as well. So once we build awareness about the strategies and build awareness about the insurance by leveraging the sun societies, that was our main strategy to market this particular product.

And up to June 2025, after around one and a half years about the agreement, we could issue around 8,000 policies. We could cover around 24,000 lives. We renewed more than 4,500 policies and we issued around 3,200 new policies and we would cover 9,600 new lives as well.

So if I talk about the engagement and training, as I told, this was the main strategy, main way to make the awareness so we could train around, we could make way around 20,000, more than 20,000 individuals and we conducted 63 meetings as well. These are some photos we took during community meetings, awareness programmes and training programmes. As I told, we could train more than 20,000 individuals during this less than one and a half years.

And this particular slide shows you two incidents of one of the women in the first picture. She’s a policyholder of our Labadi policy. She brought this policy and she was a businessman, entrepreneur on small cake making business. During her business, during the inception of her business, she had to stay five days in the hospital, but as she was a customer of Labadi policy, she’s a policyholder so she was take care by this policy. Though she stayed five days at the hospital, we could take care about her income so we didn’t let the income go down. We gave the hospital cash benefit and she got benefited from it.

In the below picture of that picture, this lady is emphasising that there are so many insurance products in the market, so many insurance companies in the country, but still the low premiums of Labadi policy is one of the main reasons for her to go to that. And especially now, she’s feeling very fulfilled that financially, she’s secured and she can grow the business with that mindset in financial security.

If you talk about the strategic initiatives, direct fundings with the help of ICMA, FIIC and everyone, all the donors, I would like to thank all the donors at this point as well. We could recruit new agents and we could increase the public awareness as I told, we conducted more than 63 meetings as well conducted and we could expand the insurance reach as well. And that, because of that, the resource mitigated and the financial resource mitigated.

So when I talk about the technical assistance especially, I want to mention that this particular slide shows that one of our employees, Asanka, who’s into the life operations, got the opportunity to visit the Dhan Foundation in India. And with their expertise, he got to know about, especially about the underserved communities and how vulnerable they become and what kind of products they would like. And especially using techniques to tailor the products to this particular underserved markets, especially with affordable, customizable, appropriate and awareness programmes. We got to know how to cater these markets with new innovative products, especially with risk-resilience centres, how more than insurance, we always talk about our founders always talk about insurance plus services. With this risk-resilience centres also how Dhan is doing that, and we are trying our best to take that particular initiatives in our company as well in going future.

And this second picture, this particular side shows the visit of Dhan Foundation to Sri Lanka, the technical assistance they gave, they have a huge expertise, especially with these underserved market people, and they know how to, especially personally, I got to know how we can cater more and more large scale to train people, make awareness with the expertise and especially they advised us and they gave the technical assistance was how to leverage our current society, no cooperative customer base to cater more on scaling of this project as well.

We learned some lessons during the project. We had some over-confidence, biasness, we have done some projects before, but this project is different. We are dealing with separate customers, separate market segments. So with all kinds of biases we learned lessons so now we know how to go ahead with this project and especially we know now we need to leverage our existing network as well. This is a huge asset as a company we have, but we need to leverage it more. Digitalization, we know this is an inevitable, but especially this particular market, this particular segment doesn’t have that exposure, but now we as a company is developing some digital innovations and moving forward with them.

In the next slide, this slide, I’ll explain it more to you. And the third point, we can see that introduce mobile applications. With these initiatives, we started on implementing ongoing mobile apps for efficient leads and manage on renewal collection as well. In our company, in our situation, we have separate people who are going to our policy hold and collect their premiums daily so that will be easy for us to people who have daily incomes as well. These kind of digital innovations and we need to, in our future roadmap, we need to establish more urban units, we need to recruit more customer agents.

Especially I need to mention with this project we could start a new sales channel called women’s sales channel. We are developing it and now we have gone so far with that. This is basically what Sanasa Life Insurance did with the very generous donors, with the help of generous donors. And we hope with this at least be what to find now we have finalised a five-year strategy plan and we hope that this project will be a sustainable and very impactful result to the underserved market in Sri Lankan community. Thank you very much for the opportunity given.

Vicky Hughes:

Thank you so much, Savitha, that was a really inspiring presentation. Thank you so much. Jun Jay and Emma, would you be ready to present next perhaps?

Jun Jay Perez:

Sure, Vicky. Yeah.

Vicky Hughes:

Thank you so much.

Jun Jay Perez:

Thank you. Good evening everyone. I am Jun Jay from MiMAP, we are also known as RIMANSI, and tonight I’ll be co-presenting with our partner SEDMFI MBA, Ms. Emma, the President of SEDMFI MBA from Southern Philippines. It’s an emerging MBA, they started their operation just this year, but the project, we have been working with them since last year around July so about one year and three months now. And thank you UNDP and ICMIF Foundation for involving us in this insurance innovation challenge.

And just to quickly introduce RIMANSI, so we are the nationalisation of 20 mutual microinsurance in the Philippines, insuring about 26% of the Philippine population. We provide primarily business development services to MFIs and co-ops who would like to start up their own MBA and then continuing services to already operating mutual benefit. Like any other mutual microinsurance model, our MBAs are member owned and governed and regulated by the government but are limited only to manufacturing and offering to their members primarily life and health products. We also are known as the 1-3-5 days claim settlement promoters here in the Philippines, so that’s a fast claim settlement customer care for our members.

And SEDMFI MBA, if you can see we’re located here in Northern Philippines, our headquarters for RIMANSI and we’re working with SEDMFI MBA in southern Philippines, that’s in Mindanao. Their mother organisation started the social development programmes in 1985, and then the MBA started its establishment during pandemic time and last year they were able to secure their registration from the Securities Exchange Commission and then later on the licence for the MBA and then the approval for the micro insurance. So they have about 20,000 client microentrepreneurs mostly, or 98% of them are women.

In terms of the strategies and outcomes, the purpose really of the project is to help SEDMFI MBA operate now. They have already established their own MBA, so they have set up the MBA but they have challenges in terms of operating the MBA. So because of the various challenges like they have limited exposure in terms of managing their own micro insurance programme because before they were only working distributing the products of the commercial insurance company and only about 10,000 are subscribing to the product that they get from the commercial insurance company. And they are also behind in terms of competition with other MFIs who are working with the other MBAs. And for a startup MBA, they have a limited fund to be able to develop a management information system for the operations of their MBA to effectively and efficiently prepare complete, accurate and timely reporting, especially to the regulators.

And so we did this proposal and we are looking at training them in terms of governance management and operations of an MBA and then work with their mother MFI in terms of developing the operating manual and then train the field staff of the MFI to do member education enrollment and claim settlement and reporting to the MBA and then develop as well IEC materials. And primarily, main component of this project is to develop the data capture system to operate the MBA. So at this point I’d like to turn over to Ms. Emma, my co-presenter, to share the outcomes of the project. Ms. Emma, good evening.

Emma Ongayo:

Thank you Jun Jay for giving the context of this project. My part is to share with you what we have accomplished so far and how the micro insurance MBA model is helping us expand outreach and provide financial protection to low-income families.

Good evening once again, my name is Emma C. Ongayo, and I’m proud and honoured to be here to represent SEDMFI MBA from the Philippines. Just to give you a snapshot of our microinsurance product, we have a basic life micro insurance with which one policy that covers already the whole family, the members, spouse and dependents. We have a contribution of 30 pesos per week or 0.53 USD, maximum death disability benefit of 100,000 or 1,754 USD. One of the most popular component of this product is the living benefit that we call member equity value, which is the refund of 50% of all contributions upon termination of membership in the MBA by registration or exit age. As a network partner of MiMAP, we also adhere to the claim settlement, which is 1-3-5 days. We have a start-up guarantee fund with 5 million pesos or 90,000 USD.

We are proud to share our achievements as of August 31st, 2025, which overall have surpassed already most of the targets and on track achieving the ones that we are behind. First we have already enrolled to the MBA more than 15,000 of our microfinance clients, which is 154% of our target. You may ask why target only 10,000 when we have 20,000 captured market. This is because 10,000 is the level of policy subscription of our previous microfinance product in partnership with a commercial insurance company. We were also surprised of the rate of enrollment to the MBA, which is more than what our MBA can effectively hand in. This membership enrollment represents more than 54,000 lives.

In short, as a family insurance or an average of 3.5 individuals per household is covered in terms of debt claims. Although the number already exceeded the target, the amount of benefits paid is still minimal as we have implemented a later benefits structure for less than six months membership to counter adverse selection. And about 60% death claims are death of the dependents. In terms of branches covered, our MFI opened another branch this year, so it’s 18, but only 17 has been installed with the MIS system. Board and staff training targets has also been on track. We are just behind in the terms of pre-membership education, although we are confident of the 100% member education already. We are not yet reporting to the project those areas that have not submitted yet the attendance sheets for the PMES. Now, I would like to share a story from one of our beneficiaries, a testament to the impact of microinsurance.

Video plays

Emma Ongayo:

For the lessons learned, the strategic management workshop has been helpful in refining the proposal, while risk identification during the proposal stage has been crucial since to our laser-focused on a showstopper-like regulatory product approval. Also, ownership of the process and responsibilities is achieved when key stakeholders are involved in the planning stage. Just like what we did with the operating manual development, which was done by a workshop with MFI and MBA. But we also recognise that assumptions must be reviewed regularly to course adjust during the implementation phase.

One important lesson also is to face enrollment for what the system and can keep and people can observe effectively. Currently, we are challenged by so much information to encode in the system and so we make encoding a major project to keep current the members records and their payments in the e-MUTUALS system. We also pursued the enrollment of the remaining 15% for about 3000 clients from the MFI. We still need to complete the API between the MFI system and the e-MUTUALS. We also need to complete the refresher course for the MFI field staff using the flip charts developed and reevaluate and calibrate key operational processes and respective point persons. So with that, we would like to thank the UNDP, The ICMIF Foundation, and MiMAP for ably assisting us in this journey. Thank you.

Vicky Hughes:

Thank you so much Jun Jay and Emma from MiMAP in the Philippines. What an inspiring presentation, and the video that you shared was especially moving. I think we can all agree that.

Well, unfortunately we have run out of time for questions today. However, if you do have a question, please could you write your question in the chat and we will send it on to the appropriate presenter. I’d just like to end by saying thank you once again to all of our speakers for sharing such valuable insights, and to all of you for joining today. And a quick plug before we close to remind you that we have an upcoming ICMIF Foundation virtual session on the 6th of November at 2:00 PM UK time entitled Building community resilience through mutual microinsurance: the journey of the Dhan Foundation, India. We hope to see you there, and until then, enjoy the rest of your day. Take care, and thank you, goodbye.