This MRR Concept Note builds out how blended indexed financial tools work in practice, providing additional guidance on how each indexed tool works in good and bad years, as well as how a long-term package can change over time to meet farmers' needs.

A flexible blend of three indexed financial instruments to manage risk have the potential of meeting a rural family’s circumstances and need, strengthening their resilience across their journey to prosperity.

This paper presents evidence from a large-scale experiment designed to reduce search costs in randomly selected sub-counties in Uganda by introducing a mobile phone-based marketplace for agricultural commodities.

In Ghana, insured loans increased farmers' likelihood of receiving credit by between 15 and 21 percentage points. There was no impact on the likelihood that farmers apply for credit but there was an increase in the likelihood of loan approvals of between 17 and 25 percentage points.

In Tanzania, an experimental game found that a hybrid microloan with a 20% individual collateral increased individual effort and repayment for group loans while reducing the number of farmers who choose to borrow.

This study from Ghana found that index insurance lowers overall demand for agricultural loans while farmers appear to prefer micro-level insurance over meso‐level insurance. The study also shows that farmers are willing to pay to avoid basis risk.

This study tests whether a new financial product that offers guaranteed credit access after a shock allows households to insure themselves against risk with a large-scale RCT involving 300,000 subjects in Bangladesh with one of the country’s largest microcredit institutions.

A set of RCTs in Tanzania tested the impact of a telephone directory on business and agricultural households. Enterprises saw large increases in calls and mobile money. Households increased search activities and the use of mobile phones for business, with some evidence of improved farming outcomes.