Insurance

Put together by Samoa Surety Insurance Ltd aid by the UN Capital Development Fund, the new parametric insurance aims to build disaster resilience and preparedness for Samoan people against increasingly frequent climate hazards.

Parametric insurance describes a type of insurance contract that insures a policyholder against the occurrence of a specific event by paying a set amount based on the magnitude of the event, as opposed to the extent of losses in a traditional indemnity policy.

One of the groups, the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme, has established the insurance product in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

The programme's Michael Carr said part of their work now is researching the suitability of the insurance product for Samoa.

He said previous work with the Commercial Bank of Samoa highlighted the reasons Samoans hadn't bothered with funeral insurance.

These were the findings of two focus group sessions organised by the Regional Disaster Resilience in the Pacific Small Island Developing States (RESPAC) and the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP) in Samoa last week where the idea of funeral expenses insurance was investigated.