IBISA

Agriculture micro-insurance is a key factor for society resilience, but traditional insurance has not penetrated this market efficiently. 

IBISA vision is to unlock this market and bring protection to everyone leveraging technology and data to build and manage innovative and commercially viable protection products together with our customers. Unlocking this market brings food security, contributes to resilience and generates prosperity.

IBISA Platform as a Service enables Mutuals, Insurers and cooperatives to define, distribute and manage parametric insurance products for agriculture. 

We leverage leading-edge technologies: satellite earth observation, blockchain, parametric risk modelling and a Gamified social collaboration platform to bring insurance everywhere in an easy manner. 

IBISA has found the positioning to add real value to all stakeholders with a platform that solves the main pain points: cost efficient policies management, remote and automated loss assessment. No claims, fast payments. 

More than 500 million smallholder farmers do not have access to micro-insurance to protect their crops however they produce 80% of the food that is consumed worldwide. 

Some of the reasons for this un-insurability are: premiums are unaffordable high or policy conditions don’t meet the farmer’s requirements. Of special interest to us are the women farmers who account for 60 to 80% of smallholder farmers and produce 90% of food in Africa and about half of all food worldwide. Yet in sub-Saharan Africa, only 15% of landholders are women and they receive less than 10% of credit and 5% of extension services land size: any land size. The risk-sharing model is based on a compensation damage that is proportionate to the membership contributed by the member. 

High cost of distribution and administration, high cost of loss assessment (claims handling) etc. IBISA is a modular Platform as a Service to empower local Mutuals and Insurers to better protect their customers with adequate and cost-efficient protection products. IBISA contributes to the progress of economic integration of the people of West Africa by providing access to insurance and education. IBISA is working with local insurers which facilitate the understanding of the community needs. 

We target smallholder farmers, specially, women farmers and breeders. We work in Niger and India and plan to scale in 9 other west African countries where RBM (breeders association) is present. 

Pastoralists and breeders traditionally cope with drought by means of transhumance and sales of livestock. Both methods put a lot of constraints on the families. Pastoral households resort more and more to the purchase of livestock feed, however during drought the prices increase. The need for a financial safety net is big.
 
Financial inclusion has yet to reach the most vulnerable smallholders in a meaningful way. There remain segments of smallholder farmers that struggle day-to-day, rely on their agricultural output for sustenance, lack financial service tools, and stand to gain a great deal from access to even basic financial mechanisms. When farmers know that their farm inputs are genuinely protected by insurance, they will dare to invest more. 

IBISA, RBM and AREN, representing the end-beneficiaries, designed and proved the first agriculture insurance ever for pastoralists and breeders in Niger with the ambition to scale up to all countries where RBM works with in total 750,000 members.

IBISA stimulates financial inclusion and economic integration of people of West Africa by providing access to insurance and education. IBISA provides a safety net and breaks the vicious cycle that keeps farming families and local community (small shopkeepers, artisans and others) in perpetual poverty.

We target smallholder farmers, specially, women farmers and breeders. Just 10.9% of Nigerien women have a bank account or mobile money account. IBISA is engaged in the social and financial inclusion of woman in West Africa by reducing their vulnerability. Because drought is the biggest threat, our solution helps women to hold onto their hard-won gains.

IBISA is a mutuality-based system enabling smallholder farmers to share crop loss risk with low costs, fast assessment and payment and no need to file a claim.

Also the loss assessment service that is on monthly basis and irrespective of crop, size of plot, or how remote the field is. Compared with the scarce crop-microinsurance offering worldwide we reduce 4 times the fees in average.
The problems of this segment are costs, trust, take-up, complexity etc new entrants use technology to tackle them.
Worldcover, Etherisc, Pula, ACRE and IBISA use Index based or parametric coverages to reduce costs, increase transparency and allow scaling.
Etherisc and IBISA using blockchain to reduce back-office costs, enable peer to peer, enhance trust and bring scale.
Only IBISA has adopted a different business model based in solidarity, mutuality-based mechanism that has proven to increase take-ups, lower costs and help building trust
IBISA has three main technologies: 
- Blockchain back office infrastructure: to make cost-efficient and transparent policies administration.  
- Parametric Insurance underwriting: Parametric Insurance leads to remote, scalable, transparent and lower loss assessment cost. Parametric Risk Modelling and solvency calculation. 
- Earth Observation based Loss Assessment: A unique innovation combining advanced EO products and human analysis bringing scalability and cost-efficiency while minimizing basis risks.

Blockchain and Satellite Earth Observation (EO) technologies enable, for the first time, profitable agriculture crop protection products and drastically reduce costs typically incurred by traditional models.

IBISA re-engineers the complete business process and business model to drastically reduce costs and enhance resiliency and transparency.

We use blockchain to automate maximum of back-office, to mutualize risk in a decentralized way and to enhance transparency.

We use satellite Earth Observation data to model parametric coverages: Like all parametrics, IBISA reduces damage assessment costs by using index-based triggers and increases transparency as these compensation triggers are based on measurable indicators.

EO products, tuned to the requirements of IBISA, play a key role in the design of our risk models and in the loss assessment that the platform does in an automatic and proactive fashion.

IBISA is designed in a very pragmatic way to lower costs on loss assessments and to be easily and cost-effectively scalable.

For loss assessment IBISA combines the use of EO products with a “crowd-watching” approach, enabled by blockchain, to avoid the need of the very accurate EO assessments of traditional insurance and lower basis risks.

In order to analyze these sat images and extract the indexes, we have developed our own technology which was awarded by the European Space Agency.

IBISA is a crop protection system that enables farmers to share risks that are weather related and destroy their crops. In this way it provides a safety net and breaks the vicious cycle that keeps farming families in perpetual poverty. 

Because the fees are low and the assessment is fast, without the need for a farmer to claim, it will even support development efforts. The farmers will have money in their pocket to recover from setbacks, re-invest in their crops and feed their family. This income stability will also help the local community (small shopkeepers, artisans and others) to stay in business during times of harvest losses.

IBISA will provide regular loss payments during the period of crop loss it will improve food security by stabilizing a household’s income after shocks. 
Another feature is immediate payment as soon as the Earth Observation data shows failure of the germination. Farmers will be able to invest in a second sowing. In this way local food production is stimulated. This immediately improves lending opportunities and encourages follow-on investments in agriculture.

Women account for 60 to 80% of smallholder farmers and produce 90% of food in Africa. Yet in sub-Saharan Africa, only 15% of landholders are women and they receive less than 10% of credit and 5% of extension services. IBISA is one of such extension services. 
It will reduce the vulnerability of women towards vagaries of the weather and provide them with a safety net.
This crop risk protection will make farmers more attractive clients for banks or MFI’s. Having access to credit is important for smallholder farmers: Homesteads can borrow money to purchase necessities and repay once they harvest and sell their crops. 
This will lead to a virtuous cycle of further growth, better productivity, and stronger farm competitiveness.

Climate change brings about major risks for farmers exposed to drought or excessive rainfall. IBISA mitigates the financial effects of extreme weather events, and strengthens resilience, therefore keeping farmers in their ancestral lands. This is a key frontline in the fight against climate change, and farmers best suited to fight the good fight. 

• 82% of the Niger population works in agriculture and livestock: 29% of the population generates 14% of GDP through livestock production of camels, goats, sheep and cows. 53% of the population is involved in crop production in the southern part of Niger, where they grow pearl millets, sorghum and cassava as rainfed crops and rice as irrigated crop. They are exposed to drought and desertification.  while at the same time the population growth very fast with a 3.8% population growth rate.

• Our platform  contributes to value creation in the agricultural sectors; Develops opportunities for sustainable income in rural areas for young people; Contributes to the establishment of a structure for agriculture financing tools; Supports the emergence and development of regional and local actors’ capacities; Builds capacity of women in financial literacy and enhances their financial inclusion, thus reducing the gender gap. We collaborate with initiatives like: 3N Initiative Strategy “Les Nigérians Nourrissent les Nigérians”. 

• Farmers and breeders highly appreciate the fact that IBISA designs the product according to their needs. Insurers have never done that. All types of crops may be insured and multicropping is allowed. Most women practice this type of polyculture. Farmers welcome the fact that this insurance is done in a mutual way. Because in case of no loss the money stays in their own mutual pool for their future benefit.

· IBISA has been invited by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Niger to implement insurance for pastoralists and to research whether expansion for farmers communities is possible in light of the NIG/025 initiative.

· We have a strong partnership with RBM (Reseau Billital Maroobé), a non-profit sub-regional entity, they strive to enhance resilience of 750,000 pastoralists via 80 member organizations serving 2,500,000 indirect beneficiaries. RBM is present in 10 countries that are: Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Nigeria, Chad, Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo.

· Through them we are able to work with local political bodies and provide technical coordination.

IBISA platform is a turnkey solution to design, distribute and manage micro-insurance for agriculture and livestock. As such our platform can be used by insurers, government agencies, mutual etc. and incorporated into social protection programs.

The platform can easily interface with other systems such as databases.

Our platform and tools also contribute to the digitalization and capacity building of back-office, distribution channels and last mile.

It also contributes to political stability as transhumance is becoming an issue amongst West African countries.

And it is a tool for development and resilience. 

IBISA system is built around various modules that handle all the different functionalities (policies management system, loss assessment, risk management, reporting, etc.). Thus, it is possible to use only part of the infrastructure by connecting to other applications.

All these modules are interconnected with each other using API and connected with external providers. Typically, we connect with Earth Observation providers using the open standard WMS (Web Map Service). By doing so, we are able to aggregate different providers and different data into our platform. We use mainly today SentinelHub from European Space Agency, and the Global Drought Observatory from European Commission. Using that we are very flexible and resilient regarding the data vendor.
All platforms operate in a client/server model with a 3-tier architecture. By doing so, we are able to integrate with another platform, that can provide new front-ends connected to our existing back-ends. This is what we did when we developed a new Android application in complement to the existing web application.
Some part of IBISA are connected to blockchain solution, that by itself offer transparency and open-standard connectivity. We use Ethereum technology, that is today the industry standard and heavily maintained by the community.

Our solution has been designed to serve population in low connectivity environments and for users with low literacy. 
Depending on the country and the local partner we have different distribution and management solutions. 
In countries/regions with low connectivity/low literacy our partner plays a key role. They do the distribution and management with the Apps that we have designed to work off-line and automatically synchronise once they are back at the field offices. These Apps are intuitive and usable only with icons although can be translated to any local dialect. With the local partner structure in place, farmers and breeders don’t need to have a bank account or smartphone.
In countries or regions with penetration of mobile and mobile money, we integrate with them as last mile to the farmer or breeder. 
We have also partnered with the last mile provider AgUnity. AgUnity’s smartphone app and software has been developed in partnership with the very farmers who are to use it. Following the methodology of Human Centred Design (HCD), and to truly understand the challenges of smallholder farmers. AgUnity developed a UI based around the use of simple geometric shapes and primary colours as a quick way of training farmers how to use the application. Creating an engaging experience for farmers is seen as a critical part of product uptake and success.

For the upcoming season, we are serving 5140 farmers in India and 10000 breeders in Niger. 

By the end of the year (2020) we will have 5140 customer-members between India and Niger, that implicates we are serving 257.000 family-members (family of 5).
By the end of 2021 48.295 people will be members of IBISA’s solution, directly impacting 241.475 people. 
More than 2.345.000 farmers and breeders will be policy holders by 2024 resulting in almost 12 million family-members whose resilience has significantly improved because:
First direct effect result:
Farmers and breeders families are protected against the devastating effects of drought related emergency sale of assets. They are able to repay the loans they took to pay for seeds and cattle fodder.  They receive bigger amounts of loans from banks because they have the collateral to minimize the credit exposure. As a result they are able to purchase better quality and nutrient rich food, leading to better health. 
The second direct effect result is the improvement of the local economy: because farmers’ and breeders’ families are able to spend more for food and other necessities in their household and agri-activities, the local small and medium enterprises like food stores, equipment stores, tailors, local banks etc. directly take advantage as well. On average MSME’s cater 50-100 households in a village or urban quarter. So 500 smallholder stores will benefit in 2020 and this will grow up to more than 23.000 MSME’s in 2024 directly benefitting.

Agriculture micro-insurance is a key factor for society resilience, but traditional insurance has not penetrated this market efficiently. 

IBISA vision is to unlock this market and bring protection to everyone, everywhere and in an easy manner becoming the Platform as a Service of choice of Mutuals and Insurers
We are unlocking the inclusive-insurance market for agriculture and enabling efficient and automated New Generation of insurance. Unlocking this market brings food security, contributes to resilience and generates prosperity. 
Next year is critical for us. After the product launch and validation, we have started to grow and started to have impact on the farmers and breeders we serve through our partners. Our goal next year is to continue growing in Niger and India and to scale to new countries with our existing and committed customers (the local mutual and insurers). In that process we must become as efficient and automated as possible in order to grow and replicate it faster into new countries. This is our make or break year. 

In five years, though our customers (local mutual, insurers, etc) and our scalable and replicable model we will reach and protect, at least, 2.5 million of farmers, pastoralist and breeders and directly impact 10 million of low-income people with our solution. 
In 5 years, we want to be ‘the platform’ for agriculture micro-insurance and a disruptor on the way loss assessments are done in insurance. 

Financial: Funding. We are starting to scale. Potential investors for this type of initiatives are positioned when yearly revenues are high, therefore, there is a gap that we are filling with co-founders investments, partners investments and institutional support from Luxembourg Space Agency and European Space Agency. We also had our first private investor Consensys. Time spent on financing is high and we have not yet secured the 2021 funding.

Challenge of replicating the success. Our innovations make it possible for a diversity of players: Mutuals/Cooperatives, Insurance companies, NGO’s, MFI’s to be the distributor of the agri-insurance solution. Finding the right enablers that have good implementation and management skills is our challenge.

Cultural: Agriculture remains the number one job creation engine due to its size, growth potential, high labor demands and relatively low skill requirements. But to unlock its potential, the challenges facing rural livelihoods must be addressed. Young farmers need to make the transition from smallholder farmer to commercial one. Professional development and financial inclusion need to go hand in hand. Farming needs to be seen as a ‘good career’ again.

Market barriers: Gender and Financial inclusion. Women in developing economies remain less likely than men to have a bank account. Funders have not sufficiently prioritized women’s financial inclusion projects, perhaps assuming that projects targeting the general population will inevitably reach women. This is problematic because it is now widely understood that women face disproportionate barriers to accessing and using financial services and require tailored interventions.

Funding. Our funding strategy comprises application to grants and prizes that target the scope of our work, productization of our core capabilities as additional revenue stream and continuous engagement with potential private investors to show our traction and achievements. Co-founding grants and prizes are key as bridge funding to give us the time for the initial growth. 

Challenge of replicating the success. On one hand we became members of worldwide networks Microinsurance Network (MiN) and Cooperative and Mutual (ICMIF) also members of InsuResilience and EARSC. Through these we gain exposure leading to contacts with interested mutual and microinsurance. On the other hand we use cutting edge technologies to make our processes and stakeholder management as efficient and automated as possible. 

Culture. Young farmers seek expansion of their farms and we are there to help them. In order to be able to scale up with them we partner with local development initiatives that are taking care of the educational and behavioral side of their shift to commercialization. This bundling leads to synergy and creates a win-win. Our partner RBM in West Africa reaches 750,000 families in 10 West-African countries. 

Gender and Financial inclusion. This World Bank West Africa initiative promotes the ID4D as a unique ID that stimulates integration and inclusion. It helps to bring more women into the financial system. Moving away from lengthy forms, IBISA has a simple on-boarding application toward more behaviourally informed disclosure practices as an important way to help women access and more effectively use insurance.

IBISA counts 4 co-founders and two employees in addition to two advisors. 

3 of the co-founders are working full time on the project. The other one co-founder and the employee are working part time mostly focusing on business development. IBISA is physically presents in West Africa through Garba Abdoul-Moumouni our operations officer in Niger. 

IBISA has a strong partnership with InTech an IT services company in Luxembourg that support us on the development with two developers. 
IBISA has two advisors: 
- Luc Themelin, Insurance Advisor and re-insurance managing director
- Fabrice Croiseaux, Technology Advisor InTech CEO 

IBISA team comes from diverse professional backgrounds, from satellite communications to Earth Observation, blockchain, to actuarial risk modelling and insurance and field deployments expertise. Our team is composed by serial entrepreneurs and industry experts.

We decided to embark in this journey because of our combined experience and capability to bring profitable solutions to this untapped market and, eventually, to disrupt agriculture insurance. 

Our experiences, strengths, common objective, determination, resilience and complementarity give us a good balance. We know the different components that are required and specially the customer. We have pivoted in our product strategy, overcome team issues and achieved significant progress.

The management team:

Maria Mateo Iborra: blockchain practitioner and satellite communications expert and serial entrepreneur. Maria holds an MBA from ICADE together with an Msc in Telecommunications Engineering and a post degree program in satellite communications. Her experience in these variety of activities all strongly relating to our core project.

Jean-Baptiste Pleynet is our Actual Scientist specifying in risk calculation and modelling together with insurance product design. Jean-Baptiste also plays a key role in the integration of earth-observation technology into our watcher platform.

Annette Houtekamer leads product and field deployments. She works since 2004 with Low Income farmers in Africa and Asia. Annette is highly experienced in finance, insurance, reinsurance, and development. She has an outstanding reputation amongst her peers and is member of boards and committees in this sector. Her passion for socially inclusive insurance make her the ideal expert to define the IBISA crop protection offering.

Our customers are also our partners. We have partnered with mutual insurance: DHAN People Mutual in India and CLIMS in Philippines. With RBM Reseau Billital Marobee in West Africa. 

They are the users of our solution and with it they provide crop protection to their customers and members. 

For our breakthrough in loss assessment we have partnered with several Earth Observation communities, such as African Women in GIS (headquartered in Ghana). They contribute monthly to our Crowd-Watching assessment platform. This also builds knowledge and capabilities and is becoming a source of income for them. 
With insurers such as Micro or blue marble that are testing our loss assessment solution. 
With re-insurers like Swiss-Re to bring the agriculture specific re-insurance capacity to the turn-key solution.

With ICMIF, MIN, InsuResilience etc to gain exposure and contribute with our experiences and learnings. 
 
With AgUnity for the last mile reach to increase automation and transparency. 
With Government Agencies to bring and adapt our solution and complement it in an holistic manner. 

Our key customers are mutual, insurers, farmers and breeders associations and MFIs.

Our value proposition for mutual, insurers and associations is:

Improved service level to their customer

Additional revenues

- Accelerated organic growth of customer

- New business line

New competences (Competitive advantage)

Easy to use platform capable of scaling efficiently

The value for MFIs is:

-Protection for the loan portfolio 

 -Enhancing collateral of clients, thus providing options for bigger amounts of credit 

 -Ultimately leading to financial growth of the bank and impacting the local economic growth

We provide them the turnkey solution for them to provide parametric insurance for agriculture. We empower them and complement their services. We are very much aware of the different segments and different needs smallholder farmers and pastoralists have.

1. Subsisting smallholder households benefit from inclusive and all-embracing approaches that offer financial and nonfinancial services. In this case IBISA is bundled with multiple services provided by the enabler.
2. Diversifying smallholder households are in transition and value the standard portfolio of financial services that can be offered via internet or their value chain.
3. Commercializing smallholder households are our for-profit market, agricultural activities are a business and they have good access to wholesalers and retailers. 

Smallholders value products that are flexible, familiar and tangible. We partner with agribusinesses, mutual insurers, cooperatives and last mile access phone providers to realize long term resiliency. Our triple bottom line approach of People, Planet and Profit for Prosperity is the heart of our business model.

Our business model is fee-based. The local mutual and insurers pay us a 10% of the policy paid per farmer per year or at meso level.

Through this model we can reach sustainability in 2-3 years from now once our platform manages more than 400.000 policies a year.

At the end of 2020 we will be managing 15.000 policies. At this stage our funding strategy is: 70% co-funding grants and 30% private investments (accelerators, early stage VC, etc) complemented by ancillary revenue streams.

In West Africa we will apply to SCBF (Swiss Capacity Building Facility) and InsuResilience together with our partners.

For Ethiopia we will apply with our partner AgUnity to GIZ.

For Philippines we will apply with our partners to an Asian Development Bank technical assistance.

For India to GIZ and Insuresilience.

In general, we have an approved European Space Agency co-founding that is linked to a private capital raise that is currently in progress with the challenges above mentioned

We have also applied to several technology programs focused in blockchain technologies and satellite earth observation. 

Our triple bottom line approach of People, Planet and Profit for Prosperity is the heart of our business model.

• Triple Bottom Line Approach
• Real Economy
• Transparency
• Long term Resiliency
• Client centred

Grant: European Space Agency – 204.000 USD from July 2019 to July 2020, milestone based.

Luxembourg development agency – 92.000 USD for 2019 and 2020 for Niger.

Equity: Consensys – 100.000 USD – in April 2019

Revenue: DHAN India – 300 USD – in May 2020

We are seeking 1.2 million USD with 70% co-funding grants and 30% in equity. We hope to raise it partially or totally in  between Q4-2020 and Q1-2021 

285.000 USD 

Financial: Evidently the prize or part of that will lead to a faster scaling up, recognition, exposure and new opportunities and support to secure private funding. Rural deployments mean facing greater barriers that need greater financial investment and they experience slower uptake. With the money we will be able to bridge part of the scaling gap that we are facing today. 

Mentorship: We believe that working with the value chain builds a foundation that enables greater financial inclusion of smallholder farmers by increasing financial participation of farmers, traders, off-takers, and exporters in the formal economy. Financially included farmers and breeders with data trails of their financial inflows and outflows have a greater chance of accessing credit and insurance products, particularly during the pre-season when they lack funds to invest in agricultural inputs that improve yield and quality. We seek mentorship support to get access to these local value chains.  

Next we seek support to create local ‘jack up’ teams. Talented people that ‘jack up’ the work of the local enabler on behalf of IBISA.

Funding: at this stage we need to bridge the gap and for that we need to know the funding opportunities that are available and fit us. For start-up is hard to track all and we arrive late or miss good opportunities.

Board members or advisors. Each country and region have its own specifics. On-boarding advisors and board members from our target regions are incredible assets for the success of the company and its mission.

Most important of a company are the employees even more in small, growing companies.  

In West Africa we like to partner with the insurance company SAHAM and reinsurance company Swiss Re to scale up the insurance protection for breeders in West Africa.

We will provide reinsurance protection of the product portfolio, through Swiss Re We will provide the IBISA Platform as a Service to SAHAM

Collaborating with West African Governments that are interested in Crop insurance for their farmers and breeders. Local regulators.

This will result in:

Enhanced resilience of breeders communities

Growth of family income

Growth of savings and loans

-We also want to partner with WorldBank and IFC: we like to benefit from their advisory capabilities and investment strength. We have contact and conversations but would like to concretize these.

- Furthermore we recognize the importance to partner with banks like the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank: again we have contacts but like to have a champion to help us realize concrete MoU’s.

-Working with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab is a heartfelt wish we have as well. We think we can partner with them because field research from economists proved that resilience in itself can accelerate development. When rural families know they can withstand a shock, they invest more in agricultural and other economic activities. In other words, done well, resilience liberates families to prudentially focus on building a better livelihood for themselves and their children.