Newsletters

Welcome! In this newsletter, we provide you with updates on the work of the Initiative, events and publications, and experiences and learning on inclusive insurance regulation and supervision across jurisdictions over the past month.

Follow us on Twitter @a2ii_org and LinkedIn and join the conversation on #inclusiveinsurance!

The A2ii taking precautionary measures related to COVID-19 (coronavirus)

To safeguard the well-being of the A2ii staff and its partners, the A2ii is cancelling or postponing all physical events through the end of August and exploring the use of virtual formats when possible. Events that are scheduled to take place from September onwards are currently under review. The A2ii will communicate any changes pertaining to our events on our website, social media channels and through our newsletter.

Featured on our website

Covid-19 Insurance Supervisory Response Tracker

We have created a special page on our website dedicated to tracking worldwide supervisory responses, insurance news and learning resources (such as webinars).  

Please feel free to share relevant news with us via secretariat@a2ii.org, by tagging Access to Insurance Initiative on LinkedIn or by mentioning us on Twitter.

Visit the tracker.

Inclusive Insurance Innovation Lab page

The inclusive insurance innovation lab (iii-lab) has a new dedicated area on our website! Visit the page to learn more about the lab process and to read the latest updates and photos > from the teams in Argentina, India, Morocco and Rwanda.

Recent Events

Inclusive Insurance Innovation Lab | May 2020

Following the worldwide lockdown, the A2ii and Reos Partners successfully reformatted lab processes that were initially planned as live meetings and adapted them for virtual space.
The Argentina team has now completed the material intended for the first physical national workshop which had to be cancelled due to Covid-19.

© Virginia Lingiardi – a member of the Argentina team - drew a storyboard of how needs of potential customers need to be observed and not asked.

During the online sessions, the multi-stakeholder team analysed their insurance market, identified challenges to the topics of their choice (women's access to insurance) and what vision they strive toward as a team. In the coming months, the team will engage in learning journeys to learn more about the needs of women in the informal economy. The insights will serve to create tangible solutions that benefit women in Argentina.

The other teams are well on track as well. The Rwanda team is set to complete the material planned for the first national workshop by the end of June. The teams in Morocco and India have completed the first workshop in early March just a week before Covid-19 travel restrictions were enforced. They are now exploring creative solutions for the learning journeys, made challenging due to Covid-19.

Finally, the first global call for all country teams is taking place in mid-June.  Visit the iii-lab page to learn more.

The Inclusive Insurance Innovation Lab (iii-lab) is an international capacity-building programme where 4 countries' teams work on innovative solutions to advance the development of their insurance market.

A2ii-IAIS Consultation Call webinar series on the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and implications for insurance supervisors | 28 May, WebEx

In May, the A2ii has seen the continuation of its exceptional webinar series on Covid-19. Miles Larbey, Head of Financial Consumer Protection Unit at the OECD, led the joint IAIS-A2ii consultation call webinars. He talked about the work of the G20/OECD Consumer Protection Taskforce in response to the crisis and how it has developed a questionnaire on consumer protection measures to help the OECD formulate a holistic view of the global response to the crisis.  Generally, during periods of crisis and uncertainty, mainstream consumers are more vulnerable, and the existing vulnerability of, for instance, the elderly or low-income consumers, is intensified. 

The call provided a timely reminder of the importance of the OECD's G20 High Level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection.  The ten principles were initially developed in 2011 in response to the last financial crisis.  However, as the principles approach their tenth anniversary, they are as pertinent and relevant as ever.  The OECD has also sent out a questionnaire to financial supervisory authorities to better understand the consumer protection and market conduct issues arising from crisis.While the OECD is still in the initial stages of reviewing the questionnaire responses, they were, however, able to provide a preliminary analysis of the results. 

For the insurance sector, measures involve a combination of government and supervisory action working in close collaboration with industry.  These include, amongst others, extending policy coverage and deferring premium payments and premium holidays.  The questionnaire is still open to responses, and if you would like further information, please contact Miles Larbey. 

To ensure this exceptional series remains relevant and topical, the A2ii conducted a live poll for participants to give feedback on topics they wished to see covered in future calls.  In response, the next series of calls on Covid-19 will focus on digitalisation, remittances and pandemic risk. This pandemic series will differ from the A2ii-IAIS standard consultation call format in the sense that there will be three calls on pandemic risk over a three week period and participation for the initial calls will be open to all.   

Please look out for further details on our website and in our next newsletter. In the meantime, the following consultation call in the exceptional Covid-19 series will be on the 18 June on Digitalisation.

Upcoming Events

A2ii-IAIS Consultation Call webinar series on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and implications for insurance supervisors | 18 and 30 June

This call will be a supervisory dialogue on digitalisation and the impact of Covid-19 on supervisory processes. In particular, we will discuss:

• the challenges faced by supervisory authorities in the transition to remote working and supervision,
• measures for facilitating remote distribution to ensure that consumers still have access to products,
• examples of innovations in response to Covid-19 and in terms of the longer-term opportunities that Covid-19 provides for digitalisation.

Keep an eye on our website here for more information. If you have any suggestions or topics that you would like the A2ii to specifically cover for this webinar series on COVID-19, then please don't hesitate to get in touch via consultation.call@a2ii.org.

Find out more

Blog

A2ii Insights: Emerging markets' supervisory response to Covid-19 By Pascale Lamb, A2ii 

During the month of April, the A2ii saw the launch of the exceptional A2ii-IAIS Consultation Calls webinar series on Covid-19 and its implications for supervisors.  In times of crisis, where there is a continuous flow of new information and rapidly evolving developments, the webinars have proved to be a purposeful platform for supervisors to exchange information and share best practice. Read more… 

South Africa's response to the Covid-19 pandemic  By Loraine van Deventer, A2ii 

South Africa’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic started much later compared to the rest of the world with its first case only reported on 5 March 2020.  The Government immediately responded with swift and decisive action by declaring a National State of Disaster and placing the country in total lockdown. Read more… 

Cenfri: The role of insurers to get economies back to business By Jeremy Gray, CENFRI 

In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, insurance should be a primary mechanism for many people across the world to cope. Instead, the limited penetration of insurance products in developing countries has pushed insurance to the periphery. However, all is not lost. Insurers still have a key role to play in getting societies back to work through the support of enterprises and, in doing so, building consumer confidence in the insurance sector more widely. Read more… 

Subscribe to our blog mailing list. As always, we want to be a source of current and relevant resources for insurance supervisors. If you have a topic suggestion or proposal for our blog, please contact us at secretariat@a2ii.org.

Recommended read

GSMA report "Agricultural insurance for smallholder farmers: Digital innovations for scale"
Using primary and secondary research, this report explores how mobile technology can drive the adoption of index insurance to develop smallholder farmer resilience. The recommendations show how index insurance services can grow through bundling and partnership-based approaches.

Staffing update

We are pleased to welcome Loraine van Deventer as the A2ii's regional coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa. Loraine has 20 years of experience in financial sector regulation. She works for the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA South Africa) heading the Regulatory Liaison Department and is responsible for liaising with domestic and international regulators and standard-setting bodies.  Before that, she was a senior specialist legal advisor and senior investigator at the FSCA respectively responsible for the legislative and policy framework of financial advisors and intermediaries and the investigation of financial institutions' compliance with and enforcement of financial sector laws.