Mainstreaming Access to Insurance Services for Rural Communities

Project Basics

Palmyrah Workers’ Development Society (PWDS),started in 1977, is a development support organization offering programmes and support services that facilitate sustainable community initiatives through community organization, awareness generation, capacity building, and policy advocacy. PWDS uses an approach called MEALS -- Motivating and Mobilizing communities, Equipping them through skills transfer, Accompanying them with back up support, fostering Linkages with mainstream resources and Sustaining initiatives through community ownership, participation and empowerment. Their projects focus on income generation linking members to livelihood generating activities.

The project aims to link insurers to a large rural populace through innovative channels of retail distribution and outreach for servicing rural clients. The project proposes building on the existing resources and infrastructure of the NGOs supported by PWDS to develop an economically viable business model.

The project envisages distributing a cashless health product sold through Insurance Promoters(IP) and coordinated by an Insurance Coordinator (IC). The IPs are selected from the local community to ensure that they have some understanding of and credibility in the community. The product will initially be sold to Federation members and then to other members of the community. Retail insurance sales channels will be set up in three districts of Southern India to provide income for the IP, IC and Federation. More products can be added as the system stabilizes to promote sustainability of the channel.

Centre for Insurance and Risk Management (CIRM) is the learning partner for this project and will assist PWDS in conducting research and extracting lessons from project experiences. CIRM aims to build product development capabilities for insurance and other risk mitigating instruments designed to reach out to the poorest of the poor. The centre collaborates with insurers, NGOs and regulators to develop insurance programmes and build an enabling environment in the country to ensure outreach and efficient delivery.

 Date of last Learning Journey update: June 2011