Enumeración de todos los posibles peligros

meeting was convened and the pros and cons of admitting such members and claims were discussed. Any such laxity will result in the failure of the scheme. The Secretary of thrift society was pulled up by others for admitting such a chronically ill person into the scheme. It was unanimously decided that only the deposit under the scheme will be returned.

of lending is lower and follow up and monitoring is easier. However, when an organisation is implementing the three programmes of lending, cattle care and cattle insurance, a problem in one can affect the other.

Kannamuthampatti village has eleven SHGs and some of the older groups are operating in the village. Chirumbai, a grass root leader from the village, is in the Board of LEAD. Thirty two loans for cows were sanctioned in the village. These cattle have been insured by LEAD. One cow died by falling into a well. An initial enquiry revealed that the owner had entrusted the cow to her ten year old daughter for grazing and the cow had accidentally fallen into the well. When the villagers got wind of the fact that LEAD may not admit the claim, some of them defaulted in the loan repayments. In the formal claim the owner wrote that the cow developed fits while grazing and fell into the well. This impasse of loan default continued for three months. LEAD had to finally admit the claim since not admitting the claim would have caused distrust in the scheme and also in any future programmes.

3.2.13.MIS and review mechanism

The MIS developed by organisations concentrate on aspects of outreach and amounts of premium/ deposit collected and claims settled. In case of CDF,though the ATCs are implementing the scheme, they still look to CDF for policy and operational guidelines. CDF provides the necessary inputs for running the scheme. In LEAD, the management information system for the insurance programme consists of collection of data from staff at regular intervals. The MIS arrangement is very informal. Much of the data is collected at the time of meetings. There is vast scope for formalizing the data collection, the reporting and review to enable appropriate decision making. The cattle insurance programme has crossed the nascent stage and is on the take off stage. A concise reporting and reviewing system is urgently needed. ASA has a MIS system where a variety of records are maintained and reports collected at various levels basically on outreach premium collected and claims details. ASA is now going in for a completely computerised system for its microfinance operations including micro insurance. In ICNW, very efficient and effective MIS has been developed over the years. All necessary insurance data is instantly available as it has been completely computerised and it can give all details online. In fact, all insurance products at ICNW are disbursed monitored through a sophisticated online ERP MIS. that exists there.

The MIS needs to include information on profitability of scheme, fund mobilisation and

utilisation details and certain important indicators such as claims to premium ratio, operational cost to premium ratio etc., which at present is not tracked separately by the organisations.

3.2.14.Outreach

All the MFIs studied have the potential to upscale the programme by offering more coverage both in terms of number (of persons, cattle) insured as well as the amount insured.

In LEAD, the programme at present covers the animals bought out of Rabo bank loan. The scheme has the potential to cover animals bought through any loan. However, this involves acceptance of the programme among the clients and more particularly the staff41. The

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Recently the organisation decided to include all the animals bought by the members under the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh loan. RMK loans are to be used for income generating activity. The members state the purpose of the loan at the time of applying for a loan. Purchase of animals was a very common purpose stated by the women at the time of applying for a loan. However, there is no check later whether the money was used for the stated purpose. It is usual

organization is undertaking a survey of population of animals in the households of all the SHG members42. This exercise will help the organization to develop strategies to expand the programme. However, the staff and the clients need to own this programme. The programme has to bring in client perceptions and what they require. Making the insurance product voluntary can help the organisation to judge the acceptance of this product among clients.

In CDF, The DRAS stands to benefit if more members especially the younger members join the scheme. At present, mature TCs are delinked form existing ATCs and they in turn mobilize fresh Tcs and form another ATC. This is done to propagate co operative movement. This practice curtails the scope of increasing the outreach of the scheme in each of the ATC. ATCs presently face a trade off between covering more rural villages under thrift co operatives and ensuring profitability of the DRAS scheme.

The products offered by ICNW are voluntary. The clients like the products as has been

expressed by them in client satisfaction surveys. The health insurance which is in the pilot stage now is likely to attract more clients.

3.2.15. Acceptance among the clients

Acceptance among the clients involves the following steps

™ Assessing the need of the clients and matching it with the need of the organisation where ever it is necessary.

™ Changing the mindset of the clients especially women about insurance

™ Continuous dialogue with the clients to assess their likes and dislikes about the product.

™ Building in the desired features and flexibility as per the requirements of the staff keeping in view the factor of efficiency and cost effectiveness.

The acceptance of microinsurance among the clients can be seen from the scale of outreach as well as the likes and dislikes expressed by some of the clients during the focus group interviews. As has been discussed in the earlier paragraphs there is vast scope to increase the outreach through needs based design of the programmes.

LEAD, has done pioneering work in cattle insurance which is a difficult, but needed service in the rural areas. The significant part of the initiative, is that of going beyond offering a simple insurance product and integrating it with cattle health. By educating the cattle owner on good practices in cattle care, providing paravet and veterinary doctors’ support, LEAD has sought to manage the risk of cattle death effectively. Starting with borrowers is a logical market penetration strategy, even if it has met with some initial resistance from clients. The organization has to build the credibility of the programme among the clients. This includes