An Indian member of International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation’s (ICMIF), The Development of Humane Action (DHAN) Foundation, has successfully been able to provide mutual microinsurance protection to 200,773 previouslyuninsured people from poor communities in India in the first year of their project under the ICMIF 5-5-5 Mutual Microinsurance Strategy.

The project with the DHAN Foundation first launched in April 2017. Through its partnership with ICMIF, the DHAN Foundation aims to cover an additional 1.07 million people through mutual microinsurance across 152 federations[AG1]  over the next five years.

The DHAN Foundation’s mutual microinsurance programme is implemented through a network of federations, and each federation is comprised of a cluster of village-level self-help groups. The members of these self-help groups reside in low-income, marginalised communities which makes them very vulnerable to multiple, everyday risks.

Highlights of the first year of the project (April 2017- March 2018) include the following:

• Over 80,000 members have been provided with health cover and around 119,000 with life cover.
• 3,573 insurance literacy training sessions have been conducted, attended by 54,695 members.
• Nearly 900 DHAN Foundation members have participated in educational health camps.

Gayathri Sakthirajan, Chief Executive, People Mutuals (the insurance arm of the DHAN Foundation) said: “The first year of the programme has been good. We planned to reach about 200,000 lives under our mutual life and health microinsurance programmes and we were able to achieve that. More importantly, we were able to raise awareness amongst larger communities through our intensive insurance literacy programme.” (Watch a video interview with Gayathri)

The results of the first year of the project were discussed at the annual review meeting for the 5-5-5 Strategy’s work with the Foundation. The meeting took place from Monday 23 – Tuesday 24 April 2018 at DHAN Foundation’s offices in Madurai (India) and was attended by key stakeholders in the project including representatives from Japanese ICMIF member Zenkyoren which has provided financial support to the project (watch their video interview).

Bas Lavalaye, a Finance and Control Manager, of ICMIF member company Achmea (the Netherlands) also attended the annual review meeting as part of a Technical Assistance assignment for the ICMIF Foundation. The purpose of Bas’s assignment was to review the DHAN Foundation’s operations and business plan (learn more).

Sabbir Patel, CEO, ICMIF Foundation said: “We are delighted with the successes of the DHAN Foundation project so far, particularly in terms of the number of policyholders they have reached with education and risk reduction services. These achievements would not be possible without the financial and technical support provided by ICMIF members through the 5-5-5 Strategy. We also really appreciated the opportunity to have Bas visit the DHAN Foundation and undertake such a comprehensive review of their operations. As a result, we have been able to make significant improvements to the project going forwards.”

The ICMIF 5-5-5 Mutual Microinsurance Strategy is a five-year project based in five emerging markets (Colombia, India, Kenya, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka) which aims to provide five million previously uninsured households with insurance cover for the first time (equating to 25 million lives). The 5-5-5 Strategy will specifically assist with at least five of the United Nations 2020 Sustainable Development Goals, and is being directly supported by ICMIF member companies. A total of 14 ICMIF members from 11 countries have so far come together to provide Financial Assistance to the project with DHAN Foundation.

To find out more and discuss ways to support the DHAN Foundation project, or to see a copy of the Year 1 report, please contact Tina Blain, Resource Mobiliser at [email protected].

Photo shows: Gayathri Sakthirajan speaking at insurance literacy training session