Thursday 11 September 2014

Micro-insurance Can Improve Agriculture in India

Indian farming is considered to be high-risk and low-rewarding industry. As farmers face unpredictable weather, disease impacting animals and crops, and uncertain market fluctuation, there are counted farmers having access to right investment like insurance or loans, allowing them to save for contingencies.

Investment in agriculture sector in India can offer farmers a safe and affordable way to spend in equipments and machinery, buy fertilizers and other inputs, and have access to required support services to yield better agricultural produce.

Investment in Agriculture


Micro Insurance in Indian Agriculture
Whereas 25 million farmers account for almost 60% of international weather-driven micro-insurance loans, there are potential customers that are not leveraging micro-insurance as it is difficult to administer, sell, and support.  IT services and m-technology can make it simpler to support and bundle micro-insurance programs meant for farmers.

Challenges of Micro Insurance
It is quite hard to sell micro-insurance and offer support service. It’s difficult to educate farmers about the risk and potential benefit of available micro insurance products. The willingness to purchase insurance is driven by factors like household wealth, risks associated, product literacy etc.
This micro-insurance industry also face number of other challenges that include the high cost of selling, inefficient distribution channels, unviable rural social obligations and many more.

Micro Insurance Opportunities in Agriculture Sector
Technology can make it easier to distribute and support large quantity of farmers, which can lead to lower provision costs. This can decline cost and increase support services. This will help more farmers to gain access and take benefit of micro-insurance programs.

Bundling New IT Services with Micro-Insurance
IT and cloud based services can be integrated to create new partnership opportunities within the agribusiness value chain.  Although, micro-insurance is already bundled with seeds in large-scale agribusiness, the increasing accessibility of IT and mobile enabled services are offering new bundled opportunities for loan services. This investment in agriculture, like weather-based index insurance, in which technology can make possible the distribution of disbursements and compensation based on macro weather trends.

Synopsis
There is great deal of opportunities emerging from the growing IT services and mobile based insurance and other finance services that can help improve the overall condition and yield of the Indian farmers.