Climate change puts additional strains on governments and populations, especially the vulnerable when there are no or insufficient emergency relief measures available. With the aim to insure the urban population of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) against flash floods and excessive rainfall, the InsuResilience Solutions Fund (ISF) is co-funding the development and implementation of a (sub-) sovereign parametric insurance solution promoted by a project consortium formed by members of the Insurance Development Forum (IDF) in close cooperation with the Ghanaian government.
Ghana is highly exposed to both river and flash floods with experiencing several major flood events in recent centuries. The severe flood event of 2015 was reported as among the ten deadliest disasters worldwide in said year, added causing severe damage to (critical) infrastructure. A rapid expansion of sealed-off surface, unplanned urbanisation, weak infrastructure, inefficient waste collection and disposal systems together with a changing climate causing more and more intense rainfall events especially put the poor and vulnerable urban population at even greater risk.
To improve the resilience of Accra’s population to flash floods and rainfall events, the InsuResilience Solutions Fund (ISF), managed by Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (FS), and financed by KfW Development Bank on behalf of the German Government, signed a Grant Agreement with the IDF members Allianz SE and Swiss Re and further partners Allianz Insurance Company of Ghana (Allianz Ghana) and HKV BV (HKV) to promote the development of a (sub-) sovereign insurance solution and thereby helping to accelerate growth and enable the potential extension throughout the country. This marks a public-private partnership project under the Tripartite Agreement between the German government, IDF and UNDP to support risk-management solutions for climate-vulnerable countries.
The Ministry of Finance in Ghana strongly supports the insurance scheme where through the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) emergency relief measures as well as contingency plans will be implemented timely to mitigate the impact of floods. The Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) will be the third government stakeholder providing data for the modelling of the insurance structure. The new national insurance programme will be jointly designed by the re/insurance companies Allianz SE, Allianz Ghana and Swiss Re, the satellite data provider ICEYE, the consultancy firm HKV providing knowledge on flood risk and water resource management, as well as Flood Tags, providing weather monitoring via social media.
Serving as a role model for a potential upscale to the entire country, the project will enhance the response capacity of the NADMO and other government stakeholders in severe flood cases to provide emergency support to vulnerable low-income communities in the GAMA, and is expected to further support government climate adaptation measures by enhancing data availability and risk know-how to allow for better disaster risk planning.
Managed by Frankfurt School
GRMA hosted by ISF
