VimoSEWA, India

This case study focuses on the evolution of VimoSEWA, an insurance program developed by SEWA, India, providing a voluntary integrated insurance product. The paper states that VimoSEWA:

• Is open to all members, whether or not they have a loan;
• Provides life, accident, health and asset insurance.

The paper also points to the following important evolutions of understanding within VimoSEWA:

• Realization of the risk of insurance and the need to protect the scheme from major catastrophic events;
• Necessity of developing a good management information system;
• Importance of the business to set critical benchmarks;
• Need to cultivate experienced micro-insurance personnel;
• Efficacy of the assistance of an external actuarial and management consultant that helped the team to recognize problems, and to realize that solutions had to come from within the organization;
• The facts that:
  • product development must always consider the ability of members to pay for benefits;
  • obtaining a high renewal rate might be difficult because of the widely dispersed membership.

The paper concludes that:

• Creditor insurance remains the easiest type of micro-insurance to implement. However, it is not effective in covering the basic needs of the low-income community for health and life insurance;
• VimoSEWA's product and delivery channels represent an alternative that is harder to manage and takes longer to achieve viability, but in the end is likely to achieve a significantly greater development impact.