A farmer in India struggles to provide healthcare for his family while preparing for drought and lower crop yields. A worker in the USA can't afford health insurance for her aging parents as her premiums grow for flood insurance. The insurance sector has always helped to protect us from potential damage or loss. However, in the face of a polycrisis world, the concept of ‘risk’ is changing.
Climate change, financial inequality, the erosion of safety nets, aging populations. These compound risks are leading to a £1.4 trillion protection gap. Three in four insurance executives (76%) consider closing the gap to be a significant business opportunity.
While technology is certainly one solution, the insurance sector can also look to the real-world insights of social entrepreneurs. These leaders see problems holistically and have deep connections to communities. What can we learn from them about the future of insurance?
Andrea Stürmer, Senior Advisor, Former CEO, Zurich Insurance Austria: “Insurance is one of the key tools to build resilience and help businesses prepare for — and adapt to — a changing risk landscape. Yet true resilience is achieved when insurance is complemented by proactive prevention and anticipatory action, empowering businesses to effectively reduce risks.”
- Tanfer Dinler, a farmer himself, saw how protection gaps were hurting farmers and their livelihoods. He set up a large agricultural insurance pool for farmers across health, crops and livestock. Starting in Turkey and replicated to dozens of European and MENA countries, his model combines risk management, knowledge sharing and seed exchange among rural farmers, along with traditional coverage.
- Jean-Michel Ricard created SIEL Bleu to help older generations take charge of their health. In France, he offers preventative care through a range of physical activities delivered by coaches inside care institutions and at home. He partners with insurance companies like Allianz France where customers with chronic diseases receive reimbursed sessions of physical activity at home as part of their premiums.
- For Swiss Life France’s clients, this preventative model is found in employees’ health contracts.
What will it look like? The future points to a different set of insurance solutions beyond financial compensation. This means looking beyond claims to prevention, anticipation, recovery and adaptation. The cornerstone of this continuum is individual and community resilience.
Building the long-term resilience of people means investing in the know-how and deep ties of communities, especially since they often know how to best change behavior.
- “Why would we buy a product that we only benefit from when we’re sick?” This is what Shailabh Kumar heard when attempting to design health insurance for informal ‘slum’ communities in India. When he asked families and women what they really needed, they said access to quality healthcare. Equipped with data from 30,000 households in/around Mumbai, Kumar introduced emergency financing along with loan and savings features. He says, “We have built evidence that communities can run their own health insurance sustainably.”
What will it look like? Authentically listening to the voices and needs of communities represents a shift from charity to strategic engagement. Community leaders and trusted organizations with ‘boots on the ground’ become embedded in community resilience and help close insurance gaps.
Ashoka Fellow Indy Johar, Founder of Dark Matter Labs: “The way we comprehend risk will define how we build resilience.”
Ashoka Fellows are reimagining how to think about risk through technologies and tools.
- Gaël Musquet mobilizes IT developers, hackers and amateur radio operators as a “citizen digital security corps” to build early warning systems and create real-time data for disaster preparedness. Starting in Guadeloupe and the Antilles on the topic of tsunamis, he is now training a citizen corps in the South of France to mitigate forest fires.
- Manu Gupta is building an open platform of e-wallets where individuals affected by natural disasters can share real-time information on damage, losses and needs with governments, humanitarian agencies and private institutions. Starting in India, this will allow communities to communicate actual ‘felt losses’ instead of ‘perceived losses’ determined by external parties.
- Through a collaboration between Build Up and Ashoka, Helena Puig Larrauri is developing a measurement tool to understand the negative impacts of polarization on society, especially as a result of divisions fueled by social media.
What will it look like? A much more nuanced and holistic understanding of 'risk'. Having real-time data on what’s happening on the ground allows insurers to make better decisions and build early prevention solutions.
In our increasingly fragmented world, the purpose of insurance is to build adaptation and resilience to protect what matters most. This creates an opportunity to engage insurance actors, including employees, with the skills and collective capacity of social entrepreneurs to drive meaningful change.
For example, The AXA Foundation for Human Progress is partnering with Ashoka to rethink early education as a key driver of social cohesion. In response to rising fragmentation and polarization, the program will support and invest in 30 social entrepreneurs that spearhead educational solutions to help children grow into confident and capable contributors to society. The AXA Foundation will engage AXA employees with these social entrepreneurs and their innovations to learn new skills and connect with novel early education solutions.
Clément Rouxel, General Delegate of the AXA Foundation for Human Progress: “Education is the pathway to knowledge; it is also the key to build stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive societies. This new partnership reinforces our existing commitments to education, promotes social innovation, and encourages collaboration to develop new skills and attitudes for positive and sustainable change.”
Discover how Ashoka's Changemaker Companies helps brands like Microsoft, Boehringer Ingelheim and Kersia unlock growth and foresight by applying insights from the social enterprise field.
- Are you a leader inside an insurance company? Reach out to Ashoka’s insurance lead, Jeanine Buzali, to learn more about how to get involved.
- Ashoka is exploring ways to use AI to curate social innovation updates just for you. Flag your interest to know when the product is launched and/or to explore collaboration.