Making Health Microinsurance Work: Ten Recommendations for Practitioners

This brief provides recommendations from twenty partners of the Impact Insurance Facility on how to provide health microinsurance (HMI) services that offer value to clients and promotes viability for insurance providers. The recommendations fall under three broad categories: product, process, and partnership. The brief states that HMI can help deliver value to clients and support efforts to achieve universal health coverage. While health microinsurance has high demand, its success remains limited. The recommendations suggest ways to design efficient heath microinsurance products and are relevant for insurers and other stakeholders including governments, health-care providers, distribution channels, donors, and policy makers. The brief makes the following ten recommendations:

• Design simple products;
• Offer value-added services;
• Bundle HMI with savings;
• Create a positive experience for clients;
• Use technology;
• Monitor scheme performance;
• Engage in public-private partnerships;
• Design smart subsidies;
• Drive scale through distribution;
• Partner with health-care providers.