Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) 02
My previous essay https://apsf.jp/en/2020/09/16/everyday-policy-studies-no-en15/ review why and how my colleague designed Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) in Northern Kenya. In this essay, I will review the process from insurance design to pilot implementation.
When I joined IBLI project at International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as a post-doc in September 2008, my colleague has already designed the insurance. One of my tasks was to contribute to our efforts to modify the insurance design for pilot implementation. For example, area boundary for insurance premium calculation and area boundary for index calculation can be modified based on what an insurance company think as the best. Also, insurance premium changes as insurance payout trigger, deducible, and exit (maximum payout) change.
We talked to several insurance companies in Kenya and several reinsurance companies as potential implementation partners for the insurance pilot. Fortunately, an insurance company and an insurance broker company in Kenya, and a reinsurance company in Europe agreed to pilot the insurance with us. Several international development donors also agreed to provide grants to support the insurance pilot including insurance premium subsidy. We agreed on that all of insurance parameters (premium, premium subsidy, trigger, deducible, exit, area boundary). The pilot area is Marsabit County (previously Marsabit District), area boundary for insurance premium calculation divides Marsabit County into two areas (Upper and Lower Masabit), and area boundary for index calculation divides Marsabit County into 5 areas (1. Central and Gadamoji, 2. Laisamis, 3. Loiyangalani, 4. Maikona, 5. North Horr).
The insurance was launched in January 2010. My task to contribute to the pilot implementation continued since IBLI project team at ILRI is responsible to calculate the index and support insurance companies. In retrospect, my transition to a graduate student to a post-doc is quite a change. My study as a graduate students is academic. On the other hand, my work as a post-doc is development project implementation more than academic research. I wrote scripts to download remote sensing data, calculate index, upload update on index to the project web site. I wrote documents explaining how index is calculated for insurance companies and had meetings with them.
In my next essay, I will move to the next topics: insurance uptake and impact.
(Author: Munenobu Ikegami)