Microinsurance: A Large Untapped Market

In tandem with the growth of microloans and microsavings, insurance policies geared towards low-income households have also become increasingly widespread over the past decade in developing and emerging countries. There is hope that microinsurance will allow large segments of the population who lack access to government social security to insure themselves against adverse life events, thus helping to safeguard their economic well-being. Yet much work is to be done if this goal is to be attained. On the one hand, the availability of microinsurance is still extremely limited. On the other hand, potential and current microinsurance customers do not place much trust in insurance providers. They also lack knowledge about specific insurance products, as shown by our investigation of a microinsurance policy in Ghana. Yet another factor is that many commercial insurers still have not managed to adapt to the particularities of the microinsurance market.