TINDOG: Disaster Micro-Insurance for Coastal Communities

Real-Time, Frictionless Claims

After the eastern seaboard of the Philippines was devasted by Typhoon Haiyan - a Category 5 cyclone - in 2013, an anecdote struck us. There suddenly was a significantly large population of widows in the City of Tacloban, the coastal municipality that took the full force of the onslaught.  

Ethnographic research reveals the prevailing behavior of their weather-wise husbands would be, after settling their wives and children on higher ground,  they’d go back to secure their homes, belongings and what little livelihood or livestock they had. They have lived through typhoons all their lives and are all acutely aware of the difficulty with dealing with an aftermath.  But no one foresaw Haiyan ferocity, or that it would leave 6,329 dead and 1,074 missing. Therefore --

The Design Challenge is “How a might weather-beleaguered coastal family have the reassurance of security and continuity of life now that they have come fear the loss of livelihood more than the loss of life?”

The Human-Centered Solution comes in TINDOG (stand, verb), a micro-insurance product for vulnerable, low-income, coastal communities for expedient disaster recovery and sustained resiliency.  Insurance, in and of itself, is not new. There exists a wealth of literature that reviews insurance’s climate change adaptation potential.  The technological innovation is in the:

- timely and accurate claim verification

- expedited payout in 24-36 hours

and disaster habit and behavior modification

Innovative use of existing technology eradicates the barriers to entry for both insurance provider and beneficiary. All this working with low-tech feature phone technology supported by a sophisticated back-end that handles user journey logistics.

It will change the world because TINDOG is designed with such deep empathy for a low-income coastal family’s functional, emotional and social context and constraints. TINDOG is, in MIT Solve’s own words, a ‘cost-effective economic infrastructure approach to improve resilience in the face of increased storm-, sea-, and tidewater’  whose ultimate ambition is to not lose a single soul to climate change-induced disasters. 

What excites us about TINDOG is not merely the foreseeable economic gains, but it being a catalyst for the longer term, habit and behavior modification needed to shift global Climate Change initiatives from resilience to adaptation.

Claims documentation slows down the process, in turn the client’s recovery and resiliency. In reality, a devastated low-income coastal community, finds it is extremely difficult to collate, file, then wait, at best, another 10 days to receive their claim. And contrary to popular assumption, feature, not smart phones are the norm. By making use of existing pre-paid mobile phone load distribution channels, TINDOG-insured benefit from Real-Time, Frictionless Claims and Neighborhood Dispensaries.

TINDOG’s back-end platform expedites the insured’s claim and is released in 24-48 hours without the traditional hassle. The process is informed by tapping into open-source real-time weather mapping data.

The mix of established and emerging technologies is key to the delivery of our solution. For the real time verification of claims, we will use a mix of satellite imaging, drone mapping and mobile apps to speed up the process. For the claims pay-out end of our system, the use of a centralized backend will make registration, tracking and authorizing transactions synchronized with the visual verification.

The customer, problem and solution is validated by similar micro-insurance products for low-income communities. TINDOG, designed as a product needs to go into test for adoption and traction in the vulnerable Philippine eastern seaboard communities that usually receive 9-12 typhoons a year. The test should meet the criteria of at least 100% penetration and an equivalent drop in casualties given same place, previous disaster.

The Philippine is the second most vulnerable country in the world in terms of geohazards and disasters. The trajectory is to go beyond coastal communities and penetrate geohazard-mapped low-income communities within and beyond the Philippines; specifically Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh.

Disaster and micro-insurance education will be a concerted grassroots effort between the local government units or 'baranggays' and the churches. The ubiquitous feature phones are the client interphase platforms and distribution makes use of existing pre-paid mobile phone load distribution channels that cover the a great majority of rural areas.

To form habit and counter attrition during non-disaster years, an automatic rebate will be awarded which they can use as premiums for succeeding years.

The solution is in its idea phase.

In 12 months time, 100% penetration of the Philippines total coastal population of 64.7 million, and 100% of Indonesia's 160 million by the 3rd year. Beyond traction, we project an equivalent drop in human casualties in the same place, last disaster.

The product and campaign affect mindsets and behavior. With the assurance of security and continuity of life, the insured need not put themselves in harms way to protect belongings.

Deb, our “boots on the gound” community organizer, participatory planner, stakeholder coordinator. Enables social protection mechanisms, and program sustainability.

JR, a technology agnostic systems thinker, finds the best mix of technologies that solve the problem. Evaluates and learns emerging technology that solves problems in the future.

Pia, the creative technologist with 16 years of experience. Now out on the field, interrogating situations for what solutions could be at hand. On-her-feet researcher driven by curiosity and empathy. 

Peachy, C-Suite whisperer. Retired CEO turned industry and academia futures and tech consultant and moulded by 30 years of creative, business strategy and development.

TINDOG is A Just Enterprise, with a triple bottomline people, planet and profit.  It is a DIRECT INSURANCE model in collaboration with Grameen Bank or BIMA. This model, as Accenture points out, "to succeed, the insurer needs rapidly to acquire an understanding of its target market—the local community dynamics at grassroots level—and of microinsurance itself. It also needs to address the challenge of scalability, and to develop low-cost, 
scalable systems for its front and back offices." Precisely why the team's casting was such. In addition, the open-source technologies allow us to scale rapidly while being an Exponential Organization keeps overheads down. 

TINDOG's '18-20 Revenue Streams:

2018
Funding (Grants & Gifts)  - 30%
Fees (Insurance Premiums) - 60%
Feeds (Mapping Data Base Intellectual Property) - 10%

2019
Funding - 15%
Fees  - 65%
Feeds  - 25%

2020
Funding - 0%
Fees - 70%
Feeds - 30%

On sustainability and expansion, TINDOG aims for a 20%-7% margin. Anything above 20% is plowed back into business development and 7% is the bottom threshold as going below that turns TINDOG into a charity. "No margin, No mission."

Solve's focus on sustainable social innovation is aligned with The Just League’s audacious ambition to champion human dignity across all sectors of society by actively driving authentic inclusive growth. 

Solve and MIT opens to TINDOG avenues in mentorship, collaboration and networking that will be mission critical when scaling beyond the Philippines.

Lastly, it is clear that MIT's hardware will complement TheJust League's heartware.

Being at the idea stage, our riskiest assumption is, real-time claims assessment is plausible. Solve can help by connecting the project with subject matter experts who will provide invaluable insight and possibly allow the team to scaffold on their previous attempts at similar experiments.