Index-based insurance for smallholder farmer credit in Malawi

This paper was presented for the "Stakeholder Planning Meeting", held in Lilongwe in January 2007. In 2005 the World Bank's Commodity Risk Management Group (CRMG) started working with national banks, insurance firms, meteorological services and the National Association of Small Farmers of Malawi to pilot index-based based weather insurance as a means to manage the weather-related risks of providing credit to farmers. To date, two strategies have been pursued by the stakeholders :

• insurance directly sold to farmers as part of their loan package
• loan portfolio insurance for banks.

A summary note completes this paper.

Commodity risk management group, World Bank - 2007