If you can't measure it, you can't manage it‘: microinsurance by the numbers

Microinsurance is a rapidly growing industry that faces a variety of challenges in providing valuable products in a profitable way. Data allows stakeholders to analyse performance and make better decisions, yet data on microinsurance has been limited. Efforts to promote key performance indicators (KPIs) for individual institutions and to generate region-wide data through landscape studies have been effective but still exist on a limited scale. Expanding these efforts can professionalize the microinsurance `industry' by allowing the development of useful tools to enhance products and identify opportunities. Several constraints to data collection hinder these efforts. These include definitional variability, competitive forces as a disincentive to sharing, and lack of data segregation, among others. Improving data collection will require presenting a strong value case to insurers, getting supervisors to promote KPI calculations and broader landscaping, and then using this data in a way that enhances and expands microinsurance.