Building good customer relations and buy-in is a key tenet of inclusive insurance and this is especially true for smallholder farmers in the developing world who have little experience of insurance. The MicroInsurance Centre at Milliman (MIC@M) has been implementing the IFAD-funded grant project “Managing risks for rural development: Promoting microinsurance innovations” (MRRD) since 2017, with a focus on customer-centric approaches.
Drawing on its five years of experience developing and implementing holistic risk management solutions in China (partially), Ethiopia, and Georgia, MicroInsurance Centre worked with IFAD’s INSURED programme to develop an insurance toolkit with technical tools for practitioners. The toolkit provides project designers and implementers with customer-centric guidance on making agricultural and climate risk insurance work for smallholders.
The webinar speakers will present a high-level overview of these tools, examples of how they have been used in the field, and recommendations for future use. Some of the briefs and tools can be found in the online Insurance Toolkit on ifad.org, while others will be published in the coming months.
The multiple purposes of the webinar are to:
Full replay of the Live Talk!
Katie is the Director of Operations at the MicroInsurance Centre at Milliman. In addition to coordinating the overall MIC@M portfolio and team operations, Katie has managed and consulted on dozens of microinsurance projects in emerging markets, with a focus on demand and supply-side research projects as well as projects related to climate change and agriculture. Prior to joining the MicroInsurance Centre in January 2013, she spent four years working in rural development and microcredit projects, primarily in Moldova and Nepal.
Queenie calls herself an “actuary without borders” – a passionate actuary working in global development and inclusive insurance. She works with the MicroInsurance Centre at Milliman (MIC@M) as a Senior Consultant. She is based in Melbourne and works across all low-middle income markets. Inspired to make insurance accessible to all, Queenie has previously worked with the Impact Insurance Facility of the United Nation’s International Labour Organization across countries like Kenya, Togo, China and Philippines etc. She is an Australian-qualified actuary with over 10 years of experience working in consulting and has been working within the microinsurance innovation space in the past few years. Queenie was recently given the “40 under 40: most influential Asian-Australian Awards.
Mariah is a global development professional with experience in project management and implementation, communications, and knowledge management activities for initiatives in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. She is passionate about financial inclusion, cross-cultural communication, storytelling, and capacity building. Mariah has been working in the microinsurance field since 2012, having worked on supply- and demand-side research, insurance product development, knowledge management, and capacity building projects globally. She is the current Director of Communications and Knowledge Management at the MicroInsurance Centre at Milliman. Mariah holds a Master of Arts degree in Community Development Policy and Practice from the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy (’17) and earned her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Spanish (concentration in International Studies) from Lawrence University (’12). She is a coach for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship program at Lawrence University.
John is a Project Manager and Consultant at the MicroInsurance Centre at Milliman with a passion to empower low-income populations to better protect the wellbeing of their families and communities. He manages the project lifecycle and conducts primary and secondary research, data analysis, deliverable drafting, and supports product development and strategy recommendations. Prior to joining the MIC@M, John spent almost 8 years working in rural Nicaragua on public health, clean water, and sanitation projects.
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.