Global Mifos Summit

Michiel Berende from the Microinsurance Network Technology Working Group is coming to the Mifos Summit to brainstorm and explore the creation of a microinsurance open source initiative. We believe that by leveraging our Mifos X platform and global community, he can lead an effort to do for microinsurance what we have done through microcredit. This session will be an interactive brainstorming led by Michiel to determine the requirements, goals and viability of such an initiative.

The Microinsurance Open Source Initiative (MOSI) is a not-for-profit initiative aimed at providing open-source software and consulting services for microinsurance. MOSI explores the possibility to create and promote open-source technologies to support existing and new microinsurance projects.

The initiative has been prepared by international experts active in the Microinsurance Network Technology Working Group. As a result of their work in developing countries the experts have each come to the conclusion that the lack of adequate data sharing, software solutions and IT infrastructure is one of the main barriers preventing microinsurance products from being offered widely in the developing world.

This lack of scale has as a consequence that many microinsurance projects have so far been unable to go beyond the pilot stages and are therefore only reaching very small populations. The lack of adequate insurance data, software and infrastructure are only part of the scalability problem.

Also at issue are the questions of the design of microinsurance products, the efficiency of business processes, distribution channels and the ability of insurance providers to integrate their processes and systems with other organizations involved in providing services to the populations in need of insurance products.

Just as we're breaking out to explore and respond to the latest financial inclusion trends in our other regions, we're doing the same in this session but will have a wider discussion and cover the Americas & the Caribbean as well as the Asias - Central, East, South, South East, and the Pacific Islands. If you're a partner or user from one of these countries, please attend this session so we can have a fruitful discussion.

Panelists made up of partners and financial institutions from Central, West, Southern Africa, and the MENA region will come together to lead an interactive discussion to discuss the challenges and trends that are shaping their respective regions and help identify and build the roadmap for how our commuinity and platform can respond to these needs.

East Africa continues to be a leader in mobile financial services - in this regional breakout session, our panel of leading partners and financial institutions from the region will facilitate an interactive discussion to help identify the latest trends in the sector, the impact they will have, and what we as a community must do to better adapt to these trends through the Mifos X platform.

India seeks to usher in a new era of financial inclusion with its recent Jan Dhan Yojana initiative and regulations creating two new categories of financial institutions - small finance banks and payment banks. With these sweepng changes, India is making one of the most dramatics moves to ensure financial access for all. We'll have executives from leading financial institutions across India discuss this new initiative, what implications these new guidelines will have for the sector, how their respetive organizations are responding, what impact this will actually have, and how we as a community and platform can be a part of this gold rush of financial services in India.