ILO Micro Insurance Grants 2011

In 2008, the International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the Microinsurance Innovation Facility with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. By providing grants, supporting capacity building, conducting research, and disseminating good practices, this global facility endeavours to promote the development of valuable insurance services for large numbers of low-income households and enterprises.

The Facility’s primary objective is to learn: to learn how to provide better insurance coverage to more low-income people; to learn how to develop an insurance culture among the poor; and to understand the extent to which the working poor can benefit from insurance as a risk management tool while still ensuring the viability of the provider. To achieve this learning

objective, the Facility supports activities that challenge the conventional wisdom. Our innovation grants are action research projects, dynamic initiatives designed on an experimental basis to assess their effectiveness or impact.

Round 5 funded by the Zurich Foundation of Zurich Financial Services, which shares with the ILO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation an interest in finding innovative ways to provide more low-income households with better insurance products. Under this application window, the Facility expects to support three to five large grants, between US$100,000 and US$500,000, and four or five small grants (less than US$100,000).

In Round 5, ILO will select applicants that propose to use technology and other innovations to create operational efficiencies and/or allow organizations to serve large numbers of poor households. The focus is not just on technology, but also on process changes that can help in the efficient scaling up of operations. The ILO is interested in the entire gamut of operations ranging from the client interface at the front end, to the processing of applications, claims and renewals at the back end, and mechanisms that hold the supply chain together.

Applicants should apply on-line on or before the 25 January 2011 deadline. All applicants will be notified by the end of June 2011.

For funding requests less than US$100,000, the application process includes fewer questions, and does not require a financial model. For requests for more than US$100,000, the application process involves two steps. First,

interested organizations are requested to apply using the on-line application form on or before 25 January 2011. In April 2011, the Facility will short list approximately six to eight high-potential applicants for further proposal development. In the second step, the Facility will work with short-listed organizations to develop their proposals to align the projects with the Facility’s learning agenda. The Facility’s independent Steering Committee will then select the project proposals that best fit the Facility’s priorities.

The ILO uses an on-line application process that can be accessed from the Facility’s website:

www.ilo.org/microinsurance