The DHAN Foundation is a development organisation working across 14 states in India. Its goal is poverty eradication and it has over 2.4 million members

The ICMIF 5-5-5 Mutual Microinsurance Strategy project with the DHAN Foundation ran from 2017-2022 and aimed to scale up DHAN’s risk prevention, mitigation, and management activities and mutual microinsurance provision to one million low-income people.

The first phase of the collaboration was a resounding success, but there remains a high demand for the DHAN Foundation’s support and mutual products which will be further addressed during the second phase of collaboration.

Key achievements of the project

• 1,012,539 mutual policies issued.
• Over 65% of policyholders are women.
• Total claims: 1,349 life and 469 health.
• Total claims made by those over 60 years old: 904 men and 445 women.
• Digital literacy given to more than 3,510 women through call centres.
• 67 training programmes delivered (attended by 651 people).
• 68 health camps delivered (approximately 10,000 women attended).
• Increase in insurance literacy for more than 300,000 members (delivered via various methods eg leaflets).
• 13 new federation mutuals established (these are specialised units through which mutual microinsurance and related additional support services are offered).

Key learnings from the project

• The structure, using federations, is bringing people together to practise mutuality and plays a big role in distributing the mutual products.
• Mutual microinsurance products need to be affordable and tailor made.
• Mutual microinsurance products should complement government entitlements – not compete.
• The community needs to drive the processes.
• Insurance alone cannot eradicate poverty – risk prevention and risk management practices also play major roles.
• Scale is important for a mutual microinsurance programme to be successful and sustainable.
• An integrated, holistic approach works – supporting not just policyholders but helping their entire families.

What contributed to the success of the project?

• DHAN lives their value of poverty eradication – risk management is core to everything they do.
• Community centric approach – high-level community engagement at all levels.
• Clearly defined mutual structure that fosters mutuality (mutual federations network). The federations help people to practice self-help as well as mutuality.
• Well-functioning, simple and accessible systems to connect with members eg call centres (even during Covid).
• Bottom-up approach – ownership at local level.
• High-quality staff training – specifically for mutual insurance purposes.

DHAN is ready to take their learnings from past five years and move to the second phase of the collaboration. In the second phase of collaboration, the focus will be on updating the mutual product, enhancing risk management and mitigation activities, digitalising the claims process, and increasing the penetration of the membership (1 million out of 2.4 million members currently insured).