Microinsurance covered 344 million people in 2023, according to the Microinsurance Network’s 2024 Landscape article, up from 331 million in 2022. The same source recorded USD 6.2 billion in written premiums and found that nearly 80% of customers were in Asia-Pacific. These figures show a growing market, but they also point to substantial room for expansion: the 2024 benchmark captured only 11% of the total microinsurance market.
Contents
- Market size and recent growth
- Products, scale, and premiums
- Regional reach and protection gaps
- Customers, gender, and distribution
- Regulation and agricultural coverage
- Claims ratios and provider activity
- Climate-risk microinsurance
Market size and recent growth
The Microinsurance Network’s 2024 Landscape article reported 344 million people covered by microinsurance in 2023. Its comparison with 2022 put the earlier total at 331 million people. The same article said coverage had increased by 70% over the three years before the 2024 resource was published, although the article’s reported period is a three-year trend rather than a single-year change.
The 2024 landscape covered 37 countries, compared with 36 countries in the 2023 landscape. The 2023 Landscape resource page counted 330 million people covered, 1,040 products, and 294 insurers across those 36 countries. Because the 2023 and 2024 sources describe different landscape editions and report slightly different coverage totals, they are best read as edition-specific benchmarks rather than as a single perfectly harmonized time series.
The 2024 Landscape article recorded USD 6.2 billion in written premiums in 2023, up from USD 5.8 billion in 2022. The 2022 Landscape launch press release estimated the market at USD 61.8 billion. That older estimate uses a different market measure and should not be treated as directly interchangeable with the later written-premium totals.
The 2024 Landscape article estimated that surveyed countries represented a potential microinsurance market of around 3 billion people and around USD 41 billion in premiums. It said only 12% of that estimated market was covered. The same article’s benchmark captured only 11% of the total market, so both figures describe limited observed reach, but they refer to different denominators and should not be combined into a new percentage.
Products, scale, and premiums
The 2024 landscape counted 985 products. The 2023 Landscape resource page counted 1,040 products, while the 2022 Landscape resource page counted 935 products. Product totals therefore varied by landscape edition even as the number of covered people and written premiums increased in the more recent reporting.
The 2024 Landscape article found that the median number of customers per microinsurance product exceeded 10,000. Those products generated nearly USD 120,000 in annual premiums per product. Most products needed three to four years to scale, while mature products could generate close to USD 500,000 in annual premiums. These are product-level benchmarks, not averages for every insurer or every country.
Credit life and funeral insurance served about 29,000 individuals per product, according to the same 2024 source. This product-level figure differs from the reported median across products, illustrating how customer reach can vary by product type and maturity.
The 2023 landscape’s 1,040 products and the 2024 landscape’s 985 products should not be interpreted as proof that product availability fell globally. The landscape editions may use different reporting coverage, product definitions, and participating markets. The figures are useful for comparing what each edition counted, while the 2024 article’s scale benchmarks help explain how products develop after launch.
Regional reach and protection gaps
Nearly 80% of microinsurance customers were in Asia-Pacific in the 2024 Landscape article. This concentration is important when interpreting the global total of 344 million covered people: the worldwide figure does not represent evenly distributed access across regions.
The 2023 Landscape resource page reported an 11.5% coverage rate in the surveyed market and an 88.5% protection gap. Those figures describe the surveyed market in that landscape, not every country or the entire global population. They show that having hundreds of millions of covered people can coexist with substantial unmet need.
The 2018 Africa landscape studied 100 insurers and found that those insurers covered 15 million lives. The Microinsurance Network Africa 2018 resource page said those 15 million lives represented almost 2% of an estimated 700 million low-income people in Africa. The measurement is specific to the 2018 study, its participating insurers, and its estimate of the low-income population.
The 2017 LAC landscape found that 8.1% of the Latin American population was covered by at least one microinsurance policy. It estimated 52 million people insured. These figures come from the Microinsurance Network LAC 2017 resource page and apply to that landscape’s measurement period and definition of coverage.
| Landscape or market view | Quantified finding | Source period or edition |
|---|---|---|
| Global people covered | 344 million | 2023, 2024 Landscape article |
| Asia-Pacific share of customers | Nearly 80% | 2024 Landscape article |
| Surveyed-market coverage rate | 11.5% | 2023 Landscape |
| Surveyed-market protection gap | 88.5% | 2023 Landscape |
| Africa lives covered | 15 million | 2018 Africa landscape |
| Latin America population covered | 8.1% | 2017 LAC landscape |
Customers, gender, and distribution
The 2024 Landscape article reported that around 48% of policyholders were women in 2023. Around 49% of all people covered by microinsurance were women in the same year. The distinction matters: one figure describes policyholders, while the other describes all covered people, which can include people covered through another policyholder or group arrangement.
Distribution patterns also differed by region and payment method. In Africa, cash-payment products fell from 22% in 2022 to 17% in 2023, according to the 2024 Landscape article. Over the same comparison, mobile-money products rose from 12% in 2022 to around 15% in 2023. These figures describe the product mix reported for Africa, not the share of all global policies.
The 2024 year-in-review article from the Microinsurance Network reported that Pioneer Insurance and CPMI covered 9.3 million consumers and partnered with 1,400 institutions across 22 states in India. This is an organization-level and partnership-specific result, so it should be kept separate from the global landscape totals.
Regulation and agricultural coverage
At least 40 regulators across 53 countries and territories had enabling microinsurance regulations in 2024, according to the Microinsurance Network’s 2024 Landscape article. The same article said 16 markets were developing microinsurance regulations in 2024. The two figures describe existing enabling frameworks and markets still developing regulation; they are not additive counts of countries because their geographic units and stages may overlap.
Agriculture products showed a strong connection to public or other forms of support. Around 58% of agriculture microinsurance products were subsidised to some extent in the 2024 Landscape article. The wording indicates partial or full subsidy involvement, not that 58% of agricultural policyholders received a subsidy or that every subsidy had the same size.
The 2022 Landscape resource page reported 253 insurance providers, 935 products, and 34 countries. These edition-level counts provide an earlier view of the market’s participating providers and reported product universe. The 2020 Landscape resource page counted 194 insurance providers in 27 countries, while a PDF snippet from that landscape recorded 102 million people covered by a microinsurance product.
Claims ratios and provider activity
The Microinsurance Network claims-ratios article associated with the 2021 landscape reported that median claims ratios dropped from 23% in 2019 to 15% in 2020. The figures are median claims ratios, not a loss ratio for the entire industry and not a direct measure of customer satisfaction.
For the 2021 landscape, the same source reported median claims ratios of 17% in Africa, 16% in Asia, and 12% in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also said a third of products in all regions had claims ratios in single digits in the 2020 landscape. In Latin America and the Caribbean, more than half of products had claims ratios in single digits.
The claims-ratios article reported that aYo had paid out more than USD 1 million in claims in Zambia since launch. That is a provider-specific cumulative amount and a country-specific result, measured since the product’s launch rather than within a stated calendar year.
Climate-risk microinsurance
Climate-risk products expanded in Latin America. The Microinsurance Network’s 2024 LAC climate-risk article reported that the number of climate-risk microinsurance products rose to 112 in 2023 from 51 in 2020. It also reported that climate-risk primary-coverage products increased from 5 in 2020 to 21 in 2023.
The same LAC reporting said climate-risk coverage increased from 39,000 people to 1.1 million over the period cited. Because the source presents the beginning and ending values without a more precise date for each measurement, the comparison should be read as the article’s cited period rather than assigned an unstated annual rate.
The Microinsurance Network LAC ESG article cited expected annual disaster-related losses of USD 58 billion and said 83% of disasters in the region were climate-related. Those are regional risk estimates and classifications, not insured-loss totals. They help explain why climate-risk products are being tracked separately from the broader microinsurance market.
Globally, the 2024 landscape showed 52 climate-risk microinsurance products distributed through financial institutions. Seventeen of those products used financial institutions as their main distribution channel, according to the Microinsurance Network LAC ESG article. The two counts describe the role of financial institutions in distribution and should not be treated as a count of all climate-risk products worldwide.