The Landscape of Microinsurance in Sri Lanka 2016

This Landscape Study provides important new information on opportunities for and challenges faced by microinsurance in Sri Lanka. With around 7% microinsurance penetration in the country, there is still much scope for growth in reaching the low-income population. Almost 24% of the population lives on less than USD 2 a day (World Bank Statistics, 2015), and health was found to be the largest risk faced by poor households, followed by property risk, which came as a consequence of the tsunami that hit the country in 2004.

The microinsurance landscape of Sri Lanka shows that the informal microinsurance sector still plays a big role in reaching out to the low income segment, but that substantial opportunities exists for the formal insurance sector to scale up, provided some of the barriers such as consumer education and regulation can be overcome.