Crop Insurance and New Technologies

Crop Insurance and New Technologies

Luxembourg, 29 January 2019

InFiNe.lu took the opportunity of the arrival in Luxembourg of OKO, a Fintech start-up specialised in agricultural insurance to organise a presentation for InFiNe.lu members on new technologies and crop insurance. OKO has recently started its activities in Mali in partnership with a local insurance company.

Simon Schwal, Founder and CEO of OKO, explained how OKO aims to bring crop insurance to small holder farmers affected by climate risks, such as drought and floods. OKO has created an application based on satellite imagery and weather forecasting to simplify and automatize claim management. In partnership with weather data suppliers, OKO has developed an index to create parametric insurance products underwriten by a locally licensed insurance company. The satellite imagery is used to define the cost of the premium that will be paid by the farmers according to the region of their activities. The farmers can get all the information about how much they will have to pay to be insured through a mobile application. They can then decide to subscribe to the crop insurance and manage their claim directly through their mobile.

During the presentation, the importance of educating farmers to use adequately the application was underlined. That is why OKO is using its own trained local agents to distribute the products and not intermediaries. In addition, one of the goals is that the subscription of crop insurance will facilitate the farmers’ acces to microfinance institutions; the microinsurance product being seen as a guarantee for the microcredit provider.

Copyright: InFiNe.lu