While women contribute greatly to the economies of developing countries, they remain some of the most vulnerable in society. For various reasons, women are often unable to access the same tools, such as credit or loans, as men. And embedded gender bias, often unconscious, means that even products and services designed for everyone tend to favour men’s needs over women’s. As climate-related events are increasingly impacting poor communities globally, along with conflict and political volatility, the gender gap is widening. This situation is also reflected in insurance products, resulting in a growing protection gap.
According to the most recent Microinsurance Network (MiN) Landscape of Microinsurance Study from 2022, one of the biggest problems around the gender protection gap is that we don’t know how big the problem actually is because gender-disaggregated data isn’t collected for all products. In 2022, this was the case for more than half (58%) of products, which means we cannot get a full picture of the insurance landscape for women. However, in the cases where this information is known, women made up 49% of total policyholders, globally. This proportion varies across the regions, with Asia seeing the highest proportion (54%) and Africa seeing the lowest (45%) – a pattern that is also reflected when looking at female lives covered. While a higher percentage of female lives are covered, the fact that they aren’t policy holders – despite in many cases being business owners – highlights the lack of decision-making power they have in selecting and managing their own insurance protection.
There are several reasons for this, including social and cultural; but even still, the insurance sector has a role to play in making products – from health insurance to agricultural coverage – more inclusive for women. As Xavier Ruiz C., Marketing and Call Center Manager, and Andrea Herrera, Manager of Innovation and International Projects, both at health insurance provider Inmedical, highlight, “The essential role that women play in contributing to the economic growth of society and being the axis of their family is evident. However, for women to continue growing and contributing as they have until now, they must have certain elements that allow them to remain active in all the daily activities they undertake. This is where microinsurance plays a vital role in access to health.”
Designing for women
To close the gender protection gap, insurance products must be tailored to women’s specific needs. As Jemma Maclear, Project Manager and Junior Consultant at Milliman highlights, “Recognising that women’s needs, though overlapping, differ from men’s, and also vary within different women markets, not only fosters financial resilience and independence within communities, but also advances progress towards achieving broader efforts, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to gender equality and financial inclusion.” For this to happen, the industry must learn what those needs are. As Maclear explains, “Developing tailored microinsurance solutions that resonate with women’s lived experiences starts with understanding their unique insurance needs. By investing in market research and data collection efforts, insurers can tailor their products to empower women, enabling them to take control of their financial futures.”
To achieve this means putting women at the centre of product development, both as a customer and as a designer and distributor of the product. This is something Kenya-based insurance provider APA has aimed for with the APA SHEild programme. As Ashok Shah, Group CEO, APA Apollo Group, explained, “To further empower women through microinsurance, it's imperative to enhance accessibility through innovative distribution channels, foster financial literacy programs tailored to women's needs, and actively involve women in the design and governance of insurance schemes, ensuring their voices are heard and their concerns addressed effectively. APA SHEild has a strategic focus on women in two dimensions; Women as Customers, and Women as Distributors. By prioritising women's needs and agencies within microinsurance frameworks, we can unlock their full potential as drivers of economic growth and social change.”
And this is just one example of an insurance provider successfully capturing the female market by developing specialised products.
Women-centred insurance initiatives worldwide
It is known that climate change disproportionately impacts women. In 2021, following several severe tropical cyclones in Fiji which resulted in a significant climate-related crisis, the UN Capital Development Fund’s (UNCDF) Pacific Insurance and Climate Adaptation Programme (PICAP) and UN Women launched a project to make parametric insurance products more accessible to vulnerable women.
Many women were aware of the benefits of this type of insurance but couldn’t afford it. The programme provided premium support in the first two years of coverage: a 50% subsidy on signing up for a year with a 25% subsidy the following year if renewed. As the programme highlights, “This sustainable approach allows women to comprehend the insurance system dynamics for the first two years before potentially assuming full premium costs in the subsequent years.” Following the successful first year of the programme, UNCDF is now expanding the initiative to other Pacific Island Countries and other geographies including the African and Caribbean regions.
In Argentina, where there is a desire to integrate microinsurance within the country, the regulator (SNN) and five insurance companies partnered with the Access to Insurance Initiative (A2ii) in 2022 to analyse local insurance market needs that could be used to develop products for low-income women. Out of this came the “Women and insurance” project, which led to an innovative promotional campaign called #MEJORCONSEGUROS (“Better with Insurance”). The most impactful component of this – “Superadoras: Insurance for Women” – was launched in 2023 with five insurance companies developing five different products focused on female entrepreneurs, including Río Uruguay Seguros (RUS), who released a home protection product for women. In addition to this project, RUS have also launched their own “Insurance for Equity” programme. This is part of their wider corporate strategy to integrate inclusive insurance, making them one of the few insurance companies in the region to prioritise it. One of the main products to come out of this is health insurance designed for women who live and work in rural areas. As Belen Gomez, Coordinator and Institutional Management of the Board of Directors of RUS and U-RUS (Universidad Corporativa de RUS) explains, “We want to ensure access to various coverages so that all individuals can develop in safe environments and grow socially, politically, and economically. And especially for women, so they can improve their lives and reshape them as many times as necessary.”
With support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and pilots in Pakistan, Lesotho and Zambia, led A2ii to launch the FeMa-Meter toolkit on International Women’s Day 2024. This toolkit enables the collection and review of sex-disaggregated data, which can help the industry analyse gender disparities in insurance access and coverage. As Milena Kozomara, advisor at A2ii highlights, “We know that the lack of data is one of the most pressing issues when it comes to understanding the scope of the gender protection gap and women’s access to insurance. The FeMa-Meter is a tool that can lead to supervisors, regulators, and other stakeholders becoming more aware of gender disparities, enabling targeted strategies to close the gap in insurance access and coverage.”
Another major hurdle for women is the lack of financial education around accessing insurance and its benefits. AB Entheos, a Kenya-based, women-owned organisation designing and implementing sustainable financial solutions, has been tackling this for the last 10 years with innovative products, such as ResilientME! This is a tool that gamifies education around insurance, credit, savings and everyday financial decisions. Since it was developed, the game has been translated into four languages and is currently being used to educate farmers and MSMEs across four countries. AB Entheos has additionally been instrumental in the design of innovative solutions for lower-income communities (which are mainly made up of women), such as Human Wildlife Conflict (HWC) Insurance in Kenya and Namibia and the Index-Based Flood Insurance Solution in Kenya.
Finding opportunities in women-centred insurance
These initiatives taking place in developing countries around the world show that the insurance industry is starting to see the importance of designing products specifically for women. However, based on the data that we receive each year as part of the MiN Landscape Study, it is clear more can be done – not only in reaching women and developing products to meet their specific needs, but also in tracking the impact of insurance on women. This all begins with data. Collecting gender-disaggregated data will not only emphasise where successes are being achieved each year, but it will also highlight the gaps where women are being missed. In these gaps are opportunities to reach a much broader market; by filling these gaps, the industry can contribute to boosting the resilience of women in vulnerable communities, which in turn will help society more broadly.