MANILA, Nov 9 - India, Indonesia and the Philippines offer the biggest
opportunities for the fledging microinsurance industry, which has a potential market of 3 billion people, industry officials said on Tuesday.
Microinsurance offers coverage for people with low incomes, including products such as life insurance, and is branching into areas such as offering farmers polices against extreme weather.
Over 140 million people, mostly in Africa and Asia, are now covered by affordable insurance premiums, and studies showed the potential market is up to 3 billion, the Munich Re Foundation and International Labour Organisation said ahead of a three-day microinsurance conference in Manila.
Craig Churchill, head of the global Microinsurance Network, said more than half of microinsurance products were focused on life and health while less than 10 percent cover farms.
"We're still at the experimental stage in offering products that could cover agriculture," he said, adding there was huge potential growth for such products, citing impacts of typhoons Ketsana and Parma in the northern Philippines in late 2009.
Those typhoons, and Typhoon Megi in October, caused deaths, flooding, landslides, and damage to crops and infrastructure.
Last month, German reinsurer Munich Re
That will be the first microinsurance product in the country to offer farmers some protection against perennial typhoon and flooding problems. Another three groups offer non-life products.
Churchill said the Philippines, Indonesia and India offer the biggest market opportunities due to their regulatory frameworks, strong co-operative system and potential risks from extreme weather and disasters such as earthquake and volcanoes.
About 14 percent of the Philippines' 96 million people have insurance, including 2.9 million people covered by microinsurance, mostly as members of co-operatives,
Joselito Almario of the Finance Department said.
He said microinsurance had a potential Philippine market of nearly 35 million people willing to pay a premium of 20-30 pesos a week for coverage of up to 120,000 pesos in life and non-life benefits.
"It costs them just a pack of cigarettes a day," said Almario, who is also deputy executive director of the national credit council.
The government has set a maximum daily premium of 20 pesos, 5 percent of the daily minimum wage in Metro Manila, for life and health insurance products offering payouts of up to 200,000 pesos for more than a dozen insurers, including rural banks and co-operatives
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