GFDRR supports governments in designing financial protection strategies and instruments to respond to natural disasters. The Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance thematic area leads the dialogue on financial resilience as a component of the World Bank’s support to countries in better managing disasters and climate shocks. It connects financial expertise with risk management across many sectors, bringing countries comprehensive solutions and helping them to become more effective in managing their own risk.
Highlights from Disaster Risk Finance
Pillars of our Disaster Risk Finance Work
Incentivizing governments to become proactive managers of disaster risk, ensuring the availability of the necessary financing following a disaster, and building an infrastructure to allow for the immediate distribution of funds.
- The program establishes pre-agreed lines of contingent credit to be accessed in the event of disaster, providing emergency liquidity when funding is at its most scarce.
Helping governments leverage existing systems to provide financial assistance directly to households during a disaster.
- In 2015, the Kenyan government moved rapidly to provide cash transfers to an additional 200,000 citizens as the early signs of drought were detected.
Implementing sustainable public private partnerships to provide insurance to the vital agricultural sector.
- 34 million Indian farmers are currently benefitting from improved insurance cover through using new technology such as GPS-enabled mobile phones and video recording to improve the accuracy of claims assessments.
Safeguarding private property through the expansion of insurance markets devoted to catastrophe risk.
- Peru and the Philippines are exploring the options of creating insurance pools to support the catastrophe risk market.
Providing public officials and governments with the right knowledge and concrete tools needed to make more informed financial decisions.
- The program carried out a cost-benefit analysis to help the government of Mexico fine-tune its disaster risk financing strategy.
Leveraging the extensive expertise of the World Bank to provide countries with targeted advice and knowledge to support policy reforms.
- A Fundamentals of Disaster Risk Financing training program has reached over 200 participants in 11 countries in its first year.
Developing key partnerships to bring scale and global awareness to disaster risk financing.
- DRFIP acts as a neutral broker, bringing together stakeholders to invest in technical advice and knowledge that supports the implementation of policy reforms and financial instruments. Industries engaged include risk modeling, insurance, reinsurance, investment banks, and hedge funds.
- The program also supports high-level policy initiatives such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Group of Seven, InsuResilience Initiative, the Group of 20, and the Vulnerable 20.