2012 Insurance Organization Award Winner - The Microinsurance Centre

The Microinsurance Centre, based in Appleton, Wisconsin, has a mission of helping over three billion low income people living in the developing world to get good value insurance. These people, more than any others, need the protection that insurance provides. They accomplish this by working with regulated insurers and appropriate delivery channels, who efficiently provide simple, market responsive microinsurance products. Thier clients include commercial insurers, foundations, bi- and multi-lateral development agencies, regulators, NGOs and others. These organizations work with the Microinsurance Centre to ensure the best potential for success with their microinsurance activities. Our work with clients includes various aspects of microinsurance from product development and training to research and advocacy. The Centre's team has implemented microinsurance activities in over 60 countries over the last sixteen years.

The Centre is dedicated to developing partnerships around the world to help provide insurance products to low-income people across the globe in a manner that benefits policyholders, and is profitable to for insurers. The Centre's founder Michael McCord came up with idea in 1994 while managing a microcredit facility in Uganda. He saw that the main reason his clients and their families who had thrived after building businesses from microcredit fell back into poverty because of deaths, illnesses, accidents, thefts, and fires and other insurance events. He felt that insurance would provide these people with the safety net needed to keep them from falling back into poverty. He shopped the idea of insuring his clients around to different companies and finally was able to find a new managing director at AIG in Uganda, willing to try to provide insurance to the poor. The experiment worked, and Michael subsequently founded the Microinsurance Centre. The Centre now has 25 team members working around the world to help provide insurance to the world.

If you'd like to learn more about the Microinsurance Centre and their activities please see http://www.microinsurancecentre.org/