A panel of experts were speaking at a seminar entitled “Protecting the Bottom Billion the Private Sector Way” held during the ADB’s 44^th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors in Hanoi on May 6.

They said that many of the world’s poorest still struggle with poverty because a sudden illness or death in the family, crop failure, or natural disaster often causes an unexpected loss of income or large expense. Others can be pushed back into poverty by these same events. Microinsurance- low-cost insurance for low-income earners- can help the poor overcome difficulties and plan for a better future.

President Bill Clinton, founder of the William J.Clinton Foundation and 42^nd President of the US, delivered a video presentation.

Microinsurance is not yet available to the vast majority of the nearly 2 billion, who live on less than US$2 per day in the Asia-Pacific region. It is partly because regulation and supervision, where it exists, does not support insurance products for the poor. Private insurers have been slow to provide microinsurance given the uncertainties and difficulties they face in introducing policies and paying small claims on a vast scale.

Dough Barnert, Managing Director of North America Insurance Group said that the important thing is how to make a virtue of insurance policies concerning the non-structure economic sector.

ADB has spent US$4.4 billion promoting microinsurance in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines and elsewhere in recent years. In 2010, it allocated US$750,000 for the development of newly-formed microinsurance markets in China and Mongolia where there are more than 200 million potential customers.