Around 150 experts from international organizations, non-government organizations, development-aid organizations and the insurance industry exchanged experiences and discussed the challenges of insuring people with low incomes.

This paper examines agricultural microinsurance, focusing on how low-income farmers can be indemnified for agricultural losses due to severe weather conditions. The wide range of risks in agriculture requires a comprehensive risk management strategy.

In West Africa, farm income is highly exposed to risks from crop failure in the drier, inland areas, and from fluctuations in (world market) prices in the wetter coastal areas. As individuals and even extended families are poorly equipped to deal with these, provision of social safety nets is required. This paper reviews the situation in Ghana and the way in which the new financial instrument of index-based insurance might contribute to better it, focusing on the estimation of a crop indemnification scheme for farmers in Northern Ghana.

This study, conducted in India in 2005, provides evidence on Willingness to pay (WTP), gathered through a unidirectional (descending) bidding game among 3024 households (HH) in seven locations where micro health insurance units are in operation. Insured persons reported slightly higher WTP values than uninsured. About two-thirds of the sample agreed to pay at least 1%, about half the sample was willing to pay at least 1.35%, 30% was willing to pay about 2.0% of annual HH income as health insurance premium.