A minimalist view of the Public-private partnership is: the public sector provides stable environment, the private sector uses its comparative advantage to market and administer insurance, and the public sector subsidizes a premium as set by private insurance and reinsurance sectors. But will this minimalist partnership underwrote sustainable agricultural index insurance in low income economies?

Three proposal for optimizing the public-private partnership are: a public certification and regulation of index insurance quality, public subsidy through full provisioning of insurance for the catastrophic risk layer, and public reinsurance of at least the catastrophic risk layer.

This presentation is based on the AMA Innovation Lab projects for the Microfinance Products for Weather Risk Management in Developing Countries. This workshop approaches the efforts and difficulties of pursuing index-based weather insurance as a sustainable market-based product.

This presentation took place in Paris, France on June 25, 2014.