Sustainable performance of microinsurance in low-income markets

Abstract

Sustainable performance in microinsurance offering in low-income markets is important to ensure that the service simultaneously achieves corporate profitability and poverty alleviation. Sustainable performance requires a balanced integration of supply and demand factors in the offering of the service. Microinsurance is still supply driven thereby creating a lopsided mismatch between demand and supply that leads to oversupply and low uptake. On the basis of extant literature, the paper aims to propose and discuss factors critical to demand and supply of microinsurance. A conceptual framework for sustainable microinsurance is presented with individual metrics that can be addressed as managerial tools for driving and controlling sustained superior performance. While this is a theoretical paper, microinsurance practitioners may benefit from the application of the presented theory.