The President's Column: Are We Really Helping The Poor?

If you measure the success of a movement by the amount people talk about it then I think we should all give ourselves a pat on the back, clearly micro insurance has succeeded judging by the weekly microinsurance conferences in every corner of the world!

Seriously though, we have come a long way as an industry in a short period of time and we should be proud of the attention that our collective work is drawing from the international development world and the insurance sector. But with that attention comes the hard questions, such as… "does micro insurance really help the poor?"

To those of us that have worked our whole lives in insurance this kind of question is puzzling, it's like asking if oxygen is a good idea, but they are valid questions and we have to be prepared to answer them. The problem of course, is how to answer them in a way that is rigorous but also realistic. It's good to see some of the industry's brightest minds turning to tackle these questions and MicroEnsure is looking forward to being used in whatever way makes sense.

I think all of us could give examples of sitting under a tree and listening to a mother's tale of how she took her sick child to hospital, waited for medicine and a doctor but when none came turning to the private hospital for help but needing to find money upfront to pay the hospital fees. Most of us will admit to being enraged when we heard that the child died as the mother tried to raise the funds by selling assets. But these experiences, whilst valid as personal motivation, will not cut it with those that ask for systematic proof that insurance really benefits the poor; we've got to get ready with robust answers as an industry and be willing to be realistic about what does work and more importantly what does not work.

We can only hope to answer these questions if we seek to work together as an industry. There is no one group that holds the answers. Perhaps it's time for academics, consultants and practitioners to put their differences aside and work together to find robust evidence of how insurance benefits the poor? Perhaps together we have a chance of providing the answers to the hard questions and demonstrating that this industry that we all care deeply about is worth the attention it is receiving.