This report provides a description of how microinsurance works, and presents a landscape survey (a detailed quantitative overview) of microinsurance in the world’s hundred poorest countries. The paper states that microinsurance has to be well-administered, cost-efficient and delivered on a large scale if it is to benefit the poor and those who provide microinsurance and the microinsurance supply chain is made up of five components: the reinsurers, the insurer, the delivery channel, the policy-holder and ‘covered lives’. The report concludes that microinsurance for the world’s poor is growing fast, with most growth coming from the private sector, and micro-insurers are positive about the future, predicting 100% growth over the next five years.