30 September 2015 Insurance

Insurance industry must help end poverty: IIS president

Michael Morrissey, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the International Insurance Society (IIS), has said that insurers must work with other global policy making organisations to eradicate poverty.

Morrissey was speaking at the UN Sustainable Development Summit at UN Headquarters in New York on Friday, 25 September which discussed how to eliminate poverty in all its forms and dimensions.

“Through the efforts of our industry’s working in tandem with global policy making organisations, the lofty objectives of the sustainable development goals, which include ending extreme poverty and hunger, can be achieved,” said Morrissey.

Morrissey said that reaching the UN’s goal of eradicating poverty by year 2030 requires a “revitalised global partnership for sustainable development, with the participation of all countries, all stakeholders and all people.”

He added: “The insurance industry, as a thought leader is risk management and long term investing, is well positioned to play a crucial role.”

Morrissey also said that the insurance industry has a big role in risk protection.

“The insurance industry has played a key role by expanding access to risk protection and risk management for centuries in the developed world, and now very broadly in Sub Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America and in other less developed areas,” he said.

“With nearly one billion people living on less than one US dollar a day, this form of social protection is vital, since the poor are often just one loss event away from calamity for themselves, their families and their possessions.”

Leaders in this risk protection field were named as Allianz, which provides microinsurance coverage for crop and livestock for 125 million farmers across India and China; the Africa Risk Capacity Pool which insures governments against natural catastrophes; La Positiva, based in Peru, with tailored agricultural coverage for rural farmers with limited access to communications and healthcare; and Blue Marble Microinsurance, a consortium backed by major global insurers which is innovating protection products that include those linked to poor women’s key life cycle triggers.

Morrissey added that ISS’s vision is to shape the future of the global insurance industry as a key contributor to open dialogue on the economic and social development of markets.

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