Blue Marble Microinsurance has been awarded a long-term agreement from The United Nations World Food Programme, to become a provider of weather index insurance solutions for the organisation across the African continent.

Blue Marble is a start-up with the mission of providing socially impactful, commercially viable insurance protection to the underserved. It was announced in 2015, and among its eight owners are Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd, Hamilton Insurance Group and American International Group.

In a statement, Blue Marble said the goal of the collaboration with the UN food programme is to improve the financial security of smallholder farmers “by delivering meaningful, affordable insurance solutions”.

Since last year, Blue Marble and World Food Programme have been working together in Zimbabwe in the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, protecting smallholder farmers against drought through designing and implementing risk transfer solutions. The R4 initiative supports smallholder farmers across Africa by facilitating access to financial services involving risk management.

Blue Marble has developed an insurance offering that is customisable to soil types, crops, seed varieties and farming practices. It uses satellite technology to monitor parameters that trigger payouts, eliminating the need for costly infield assessment.

“We are excited to expand our partnership with WFP across Africa building on the work we have done in Zimbabwe and our joint commitment to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers to climate risk,” Jaime de Piniés, Head of Africa at Blue Marble, said.

While Lorenzo Bosi, resilience and climate change co-ordinator for WFP Zimbabwe, said: “Working with a dynamic company such as Blue Marble will allow WFP to further scale up and refine innovative climate risk solutions for food insecure and vulnerable people, leveraging on private sector expertise.”

Blue Marble launched its first venture in Zimbabwe in 2016 and is committed to advancing financial inclusion programmes for underserved populations in Africa. It is now scaling the weather index insurance offering across the continent with WFP and other partners.