From 4 to 7 October, Rome hosted the 30th biennial congress of the International Association of Agricultural Production Insurers (Association Internationale des Assureurs de la Production Agricole or AIAG ).
At the congress, Munich Re Agro accentuated a number of important points and generated new impetus to move forward with the worldwide discussion regarding public-private partnerships (PPP) for crop insurance systems.
Munich Re Agro took the opportunity offered by the congress to present the SystemAgro crop insurance system, which functions within the framework of a public-private partnership (PPP), and to explain clearly why SystemAgro is the system of the future.
SystemAgro creates a basis for offering all farmers affordable multi-peril crop insurance and reliable protection in the event of catastrophe. This depends particularly on the collaboration of the state government, which subsidises premiums and, in the event of a catastrophe, pays part of the insured losses. The infrastructure of existing crop insurers is used to implement the system on a broad scale. As stated in the presentation, “Only shoulder to shoulder with the government is the insurance industry able to offer multi-peril crop insurance that sustainably covers the increasing severity of climatic oscillations and thus offer farmers a stable financial basis”. To develop this concept, Munich Re analysed all the sustainable crop insurance systems around the world and is consequently able to produce a customised SystemAgro solution for each and every country.
The congress participants were in agreement that worldwide awareness of the need for public-private partnerships in crop insurance will significantly increase in the future.
The AIAG was founded in Zurich in 1951 with the aim of providing insurers in the agricultural sector with a platform for exchanging opinions, experience and statistics relating to the insurance of hail and other natural hazards. Munich Re has been active in the AIAG for more than two decades. Participants in the congress also included influential organisations with close ties to national governments.
Munich Re will present SystemAgro again at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) in Berlin on 16 January 2010.
