A Contingent Line of Credit (CLOC) is a new financial instrument tailor-made for microfinance institutions and their smallholder clients and a powerful addition to a portfolio that charts a future of business growth.
This report documents the results of a randomized controlled trial designed to identify and measure the direct and indirect impacts of the PEPFAR-funded Força à Comunidade e Crianças (FCC) program on households with orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) in Mozambique.
New MRR research from Nepal finds that pandemic-related shocks for rural households coincided with the government-imposed national lockdown and that women who took part in a livelihood-building program before the pandemic were more resilient by being in a stronger financial position.
A resilience-based approach to social protection that includes insurance is the only sustainable way to manage poverty in the long-term. However, even this approach will fail if worst-case climate change scenarios come to pass.
Because the VISA Model uses savings groups to aggregate small purchases into one larger purchase, and to pass on to the insurance company, the operating costs of the company are reduced and the sales increased.
Temporary subsidies share the risk of experimentation. If these subsidies induce learning and continued use of the new technology after the subsidy expires, these are a smart public investment.
Our results suggest that most uninsured households will probably take on debt to pay for health care at some point in their lives. A substantial minority of those households will also sell productive assets such as land. SKY health insurance cuts the rates of these events by about a third.
Our results, which are consistent with other research regarding FISP, suggest that the most vulnerable people in the communities were not the main recipients of the coupons.
An important aspect of this evaluation will explore whether or not the asset accumulation and productivity effects of insurance are sufficiently robust that they create a case for subsidizing insurance premiums as an alternative to cash transfers or food aid.