The Weather Risk Management Facility, a joint undertaking of IFAD and WFP, reviewed a range of recent experiences with index insurance programmes around the world, analysing the key actors, features of the products, and their successes and challenges. These pilot programmes have demonstrated the great potential of index insurance as a risk-management tool. They suggest that index insurance could not only provide an additional effective, market-mediated solution to promote agricultural development, but it could also make disaster relief more effective.