Pandemics, Protection and Emerging Markets: Mutuals and Cooperatives as a Vehicle for Building Long-Term Development

Insurance solutions are a critical element of development, providing sustainability and resilience to almost all aspects of life and living, at both country and community level, whether through macro-economic sovereign-level risk finance or community-level micro-insurance, and everything in-between. Insurance solutions can protect a nation’s assets as well as an individual family’s health and well-being. Integrating financing solutions, with insurance at the heart of a wider financial inclusion pitch, in particular offers major potential to combat the multitude of risks facing community resilience including pandemics, droughts, cyclones and more. The insurance industry, especially through the mutual/cooperative community, has unprecedented and direct access to all of society, and in many cases into the homes and lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable families.

The UNDP/ICMIF partnership, established in 2018, aims to leverage the power of the global mutual and cooperative industry to build resilience and deliver inclusive insurance solutions in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This webinar serves as a discussion between the UNDP and ICMIF members on how the mutual and cooperative sector has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in emerging markets, how they are building back better and what is being done to promote development through insurance and risk finance.