Conference: Catastrophic and index insurance in developing countries

Losses due to natural disasters have increased sharply over the last 30 years. What is remarkable, however, is that the gap in insurance protection between uninsured and insured natural catastrophes has been increasing. Lack of financial protection against disasters leads to slow recovery, costly financing of relief and reconstruction, and political manipulation in the allocation of post-disaster assistance.

For this reason, many countries have started to introduce Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance (DRFI) schemes. A leading pioneer in doing this is Mexico with both a national strategy for financing the reconstruction of disaster-affected public assets, FONDEN, and a scheme specifically targeted at protecting smallholder farmers from yield losses due to drought, CADENA.

Well-designed and implemented DRFI schemes can have advantages both ex-ante for better risk management and ex-post for better shock coping.

The Foundation for Studies and Research on International Development (FERDI), the Center for Studies and Research on International Development (CERDI) and the French Agency for Development seek to open a dialogue with development practitioners, NGOs, private banks and insurance companies in order to confront research results with these actors’ experience. They aim at stimulating interactions and favoring the exchange of experiences between researchers and practitioners.

The conference will be led by Alain de Janvry, Professor, University of California, Berkeley and Senior Fellow Ferdi.