MicroSave-Africa Research Plan: Assessing the Demand for Micro Insurance in East Africa

This document presents the demand-side research protocol that MicroSave used to generate the document ‘Reducing Vulnerability: The Demand for Microinsurance’.

The document presents:

• The process and templates for structuring the research and analysing the results;
• The objective of the three field studies, which was to assess the demand for microinsurance by poor urban and rural households in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

The studies:

• Focus on coping mechanisms that people use in response to risks, the effectiveness of these coping mechanisms, and gaps that could potentially be filled by microinsurance;
• Obtain data from clients of microfinance institutions in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda through focus group discussions and individual interviews;
• Identify and document the workings of indigenous schemes providing insurance services to poor households (for example, funeral funds, munno makabi, self help groups);
• Assess the financial profile of households to explore their capacity to afford insurance premiums in the context of other financial commitments;
• Explore the level of customer satisfaction with the services that insurance suppliers provide in each country;
• Will use their findings to assess the potential demand for insurance services in response to the crises/risks/vulnerability;
• Aim to develop and test a set of tools to carry out market research on the demand for microinsurance by poor households.