Implementation and Enhancement of Agri-Insurance in Serbia

Field visit in the KfW financed project

Implementation and Enhancement of Agri-Insurance in Serbia

AgroProtekt is an innovative agricultural loan product combining a loan with an insurance component and hereby addressing the lack of agricultural insurance coverage in Serbia. It had been launched in the beginning of 2016 by two local partner institutions – a bank (Banca Intesa) and an insurance company (Generali Insurance) – and has since then been evaluated, further  implemented  and strengthened by the project Implementation and Enhancement of Agri-Insurance in Serbia. The project commissioned and financed by KfW is conducted by AFC Consultants International (lead company) in collaboration with the Ukrainian company AgroInsurance International and our strategic partner Akademie Deutscher Genossenschaften (ADG).

One of the key activities is capacity building to the bank and the insurance company. To further strengthen the capacities of the loss adjustment experts of Generali Insurance (GI) – the company providing the insurance component within AgroProtekt – the projects’ experts are currently in the process of setting up concise loss-adjustment guidelines (LAG). The guidelines for the six crops which are insured by AgroProtekt (see the table below for detailed information) are based on international best practices and adapted to the real local situation. Our technical support includes regular field visits by our experts. During a recent mission in September 2016, our team visited a client’s sugar-beet field about 50 km north of Novisad where our agricultural insurance expert analyzed current loss-adjustment methods with two of GI’s loss adjustment officers. In 2016 Serbian farmers experienced the worst hail season within the last 10 years. Consequently the number of claims by affected farmers increased tremendously, keeping the officers busy with the settlement of all the individual claims.

After the LAG will be set up, one of the major activities in 2017 will be the training of current and newly recruited loss adjustment officers within GI to assure that the farmers claims can be dealt with in a timely and high quality way.

The projects’ clients are the Serbian Ministry of Agriculture and Environment Protection (MoAE) and KfW – for whom this project approach is not only part of the newly set-up insurance task-force but also a pilot for potential scaling-up to new counties and regions. In Serbia the project is so far implemented in Vojvodina region in northern Serbia. However there is a strong interest of clients and participating stakeholders to regionally expend in the future and thereby further increase the benefits for not only Generali Insurance and Banca Intesa but also the entire Serbian financial and agricultural market.

For further information on the project please contact:

Mr. Jakob Lutz (Project Manager): jakob.lutz [at] afci.de