Weather Index Insurance for Agriculture: Guidance for Development Practitioners

This paper is a distillation of the findings of the work undertaken by the World Bank, in the weather index insurance field.  It is deliberately not a collation of case studies, but rather a practical overview of the subject. The purpose of this paper is to introduce world bank task managers and development professionals, who are not insurance sector specialists, to weather index insurance. The paper seeks to place this relatively new insurance product in a broader context of agricultural risk management and more specifically within the context of agricultural insurance. The paper takes the reader through the main decision points that would lead to a decision to embark upon a weather index insurance pilot and then assists them to understand the technical procedures and requirements that are involved with it. In addition, the paper advises the reader on the practical challenges and implications that are involved with a pilot of this nature and what they might expect to encounter during the initial stages of implementation.

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• Full Document

• Executive Summary

• Chapter 1: Agricultural Risks and Risk Management

• Chapter 2: Agricultural Insurance: A Background

• Chapter 3: Introduction to Weather Index Insurance

• Chapter 4: Prefeasibility Assessment: “To WII or Not to WII?”

• Chapter 5: Technical Feasibility: Creation of the Black Box

• Chapter 6: Initial Implementation: The Devil in the Detail

• Chapter 7: Regulatory Issues

• Chapter 8: Reflections on Experience Gained

• Annexes