Public Private Partnerships for inclusive insurance against climate risks: What works and what does not?

Programme Manager, Ford Foundation, India

Head Middle East & Africa, Swiss Re, Switzerland

Mario Wilhelm is an experienced finance and (re)insurance professional with over 10 years of experience. He is a prime mover in microinsurance and is advocating a private sector approach in financial inclusion.

He specialties include business development, strategic planning, managing public-private-partnerships (PPP), alternative distribution, B2B solutions in market development and research in high growth markets. Mario´s interests include sports (rowing and cycling), playing the alp flying horn and books & art (history, biographies and Asian culture).

Mario holds a PhD in Southeast Asian Studies and Disaster Research and a BA in Banking and Finance. He is currently a Senior Microinsurance Specialist at Swiss Re´s Global Partnerships team and is based in Zurich.

Munya has 29 years of experience in the insurance sector. He has particular expertise in agriculture insurance with a focus on financial inclusion and risk management for vulnerable sectors of society. With a business and IT background and extensive private sector experience, Munya is the technical lead at the Agro Consortium (AIC) in Uganda, a coalition of currently 13 insurance companies, licensed to underwrite agriculture insurance in Uganda. He is also a technical committee member of the Uganda Agriculture Insurance Scheme (UAIS).

Ms Emily Coleman has over 17-years’ experience in international development at UN institutions, 15 years of which she has been working on agricultural insurance. Currently she is the agricultural insurance senior expert for the Sida-financed INSURED programme, which is implemented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), through the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM). Ms. Coleman’s experience in agricultural insurance spans project management, implementation, research and development, capacity building, and technical assistance across different regions. Her field experience has been focused on Africa and Asia, including Cambodia, China, Rwanda, Senegal, and Zambia. Ms. Coleman has co-authored international publications on agricultural insurance which include a review of global experiences, guidance for governments and donors, and findings on remote sensing for index insurance development. She has been regularly called upon to present at different international fora on the topics and to contribute to global policy dialogue such as to the G8 and G20. Ms. Coleman has designed, coordinated, and provided technical support to a number of donor- and IFAD-funded initiatives on insurance and financial inclusion.

Senior Technical Officer, ILO’s Impact Insurance Facility

Pranav Prashad is the Senior Technical Officer at the International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s Impact Insurance Facility. He provides technical expertise on agriculture insurance, distribution and mobile services as well as use of technology in insurance.

Pranav Prashad has more than three decades of experience in insurance and business management. He has initiated and taken to scale agriculture and health insurance projects amongst low-income households in India, utilizing a diverse set of distribution channels and enabling the projects with technology.

At the Facility, Pranav has supported the successful introduction of weather index insurance products in Sri Lanka and index-related products for livestock in Kenya among other projects. He is also the lead author of the Facility’s paper looking as various ways mobile phone technology can help in building scale and efficiency in insurance operations.

He holds an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies and a bachelor’s honours degree in Economics, both from Delhi University, India.