The Toolkit: Resources for designing inclusive insurance products and markets
Here you will find different resources related to each section of this Navigator, including the name, a brief description, and a link to the tool.
Available tools are organized according to the sections in the Navigator they pertain to below.
1. Using this Navigator and preparing for the work
Capacity-building Assessment: Designed by ILO and the Microinsurance Innovation Facility, this self-assessment tool helps providers establish capacity in developing microinsurance activities.
Tags: Planning, Self-assessment
Process Mapping for Microinsurance Operations: This self-analysis tool helps support institutions around their process related to microinsurance. Designed by Allianz in cooperation with GIZ.
Tags: Planning, Self-assessment
A Microinsurance Toolbox: Solutions to Challenges: This step by step tool shows how to develop a product within an institution.
Tags: Planning, Product development
Watch this video by NewHope Church to reflect on your own internal and cultural biases.
Tags: Internal bias, Culture bias
Watch this video with CEO Claire Burns to learn more about MetLife’s client-centred journey and understand how the company changed their mindset from product to client-centred business units.
Tags: Planning, Strategy, Client-centred
Watch this video to hear from Ovia K. Tuhairwe, Deputy Managing Director at Radiant Insurance Services in Rwanda, and others on being a client-centred organization.
Tags: Planning, Strategy, Client-centred
Watch this video to learn more about Pioneer Card’s client-centric journey presented by CGAP.
Tags: Planning, Strategy, Client-centred
2. Market research
Read EA Consultants’ tips on bottom-up segmentation for financial inclusion.
Tags: Market research, Qualitative research, External data collection
Read more about creating a persona from writer Eric Jan Huizer.
Tags: Design thinking, Personas
EasyAgile: This paid tool helps you to create personas.
Tags: Agile methodology, Design thinking, Personas
The UX Collective offers great insights into design thinking, including agile design and persona creation for tech solutions. Many of these can be applied to an inclusive insurance development effort.
Tags: Agile methodology, Design thinking, Personas
Client Math Toolkit: This toolkit helps you to gauge how well a specific insurance product is providing value to end users.
Tags: Client value, Qualitative research
The CGAP Customer-Centric Guide focuses on the relationship between consumers and business success by pinpointing areas in a user journey that can be made more customer friendly. The Guide includes a useful resources page with video clips of cases from multiple insurance initiatives.
Tags: Client value, Market research
The Gates Foundation Gender Equality Toolbox is made up of tools that can guide foundation staff in designing, managing and measuring the results and impact of gender intentional and gender transformative investments.
Tags: Gender, Market research, Impact measurement, Quantitative research, Qualitative research
International Research And Training Institute For The Advancement Of Women (UN-INSTRAW)’s Gender Research: A How-To Guide provides researchers with practical information on integrating gender concerns into research projects and programmes.
Tags: Gender, Market research, Quantitative research, Qualitative research
World Bank DataBank: This analysis and visualization tool contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics, indicators and data from World Bank member countries.
Tags: Quantitative research, External data
Country Diagnostic Studies: Analytical Framework and Methodology: Offered by the Access to Insurance Initiative (A2ii), this framework gives details of how to conduct a context analysis in a specific country around microinsurance.
Tags: Quantitative research, External data
Survey and data collection tools
SurveyMonkey: This Android, iOS and web-based platform and hosting site allows you to design a survey, collect responses, analyse data and present results. There are free and paid versions depending on needs. The application does not require an internet connection, contains a sample size calculator and offers tables and charts to summarize basic results.
Tags: Market research, External data collection, Quantitative research, Survey software
KoBoToolbox: This Android and web-based suite of tools for field data collection can be used in challenging environments where internet access is limited. It is free and open source. It does not offer tables and charts to summarize findings and requires knowledge of statistics for analysis.
Tags: Market research, External data collection, Quantitative research, Survey software, Sample size calculator
Google Forms: This web-based platform and hosting site allows you to design a survey, collect responses, analyse and present results. It does not offer tables and charts to summarize findings and requires knowledge of statistics for analysis.
Tags: Market research, External data collection, Quantitative research, Survey software
AI Learning Language Models: Learning language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity allow for sample size calculations. The crucial aspect is to offer the correct prompts and always verify assumptions, formulas and outputs with a statistician and a second calculator. When using these tools, provide a goal such as “Estimate a sample size for a survey to measure a percentage (proportion).” Then provide a Confidence level – usually 95% and a Margin of error such as ±3% or ±5% . In addition, you will provide a best guess of the percentage you’ll measure (prevalence), the Population size (optional), an expected response rate: e.g., 60% (so AI can inflate the sample you attempt to contact) and sampling method: simple random (design effect = 1) or clustered (use 1.5–2.0 if you’re sampling by schools/branches/neighborhoods).
Tags: Market research, external data collection, quantitative research, survey software, sample size calculator, AI, LLM
Qualitative analysis software
Most qualitative analysis involves small samples, which can be analysed in Microsoft Excel or any simple matrix format. Specialized software is also available for larger and more complex data sets. It can also be useful when the capacity for sophisticated analysis is low. Read more about new qualitative methods in the i2ifacility’s 10 Innovations in Qualitative Research: Broadening the Financial Inclusion Survey Toolkit.
Tags: Qualitative research, Focus groups
Dedoose is a cross-platform app for analysing qualitative and mixed methods research with text, photos, audio, videos, spreadsheet data and more.
Tags: External data collection, Product development, Qualitative analysis
Nvivo helps you discover more from your qualitative and mixed methods data. You can use this app to uncover richer insights and produce clearly articulated, defensible findings backed by rigorous evidence.
Tags: External data collection, Product development, Qualitative analysis
ATLAS.ti helps you uncover actionable insights with intuitive research tools and best-in-class technology. You can use this tool for all levels of need, from basic analysis tasks to in-depth research projects.
Tags: External data collection, Product development, Qualitative analysis
3. Product and Process Design
Microinsurance Product Development for Microfinance Providers: This guide from consultancy group Milliman helps stakeholders to launch microinsurance products, beginning with institutional assessment, market research, prototyping, piloting and review on a circular framework.
Tags: Product development, Microfinance
Miro is an online whiteboard for easy collaboration. It is fast, free and simple to use online. It can be used with a variety of other online video conferencing apps to promote online collaboration.
Tags: Agile methods, Design thinking, Design workshops
IDEO is a global design company committed to creating a positive impact. The company creates human-centred products, services, spaces and organizations that empower communities, cities and even countries. They offer a variety of tools, videos and courses to promote the adoption of design thinking.
Tags: Agile methods, Design thinking, Design workshops
Rapid Prototyping for Inclusive Insurance: Testing Customer Challenges and Gaining Early Insights on Feasibility: This guide by the International Fund for Agriculture Development. presents the rapid prototyping process for inclusive insurance implementation. Its focus is to ensure that donors and their implementing partners understand the importance of prototyping and plan for it at a high level in project design and implementation processes.
Tags: Agile methods, Design thinking, Design workshops
The RICE Scoring prioritization model helps product managers determine which products, features and other initiatives to put on their road maps by scoring these items according to four factors: reach, impact, confidence and effort.
Tags: Agile methods, Design thinking
Partnership Assessment Tool: Created by ILO and the Microinsurance Innovation Facility, this tool facilitates the assessment of current/potential partnerships for microinsurance activities.
Tags: Partnerships
Pricing your product
The ILO Impact Insurance Facility’s Pricing for Microinsurance: A Technical Guide is a useful guide to defining pricing for microinsurance products.
Tags: Pricing, Actuarial
Milliman’s Health Microinsurance Instructional Pricing Tool is a guide to key actuarial principles for the pricing of health-related products.
Tags: Pricing, Actuarial, Health
Actuarial pricing tool: This presentation provides an extensive framework with examples on how to price a specific life product.
Tags: Pricing, Actuarial, Life insurance
Prototype testing
The ILO Impact Insurance Facility’s PACE Model offers a framework to evaluate specific microinsurance products across four dimensions of value: product, access, cost and experience. It can be used to assess new and existing products.
Tags: PACE, Client value, Evaluation
Rapid Prototyping for Inclusive Insurance: Testing Customer Challenges and Gaining Early Insights on Feasibility: This brief document from Milliman explains rapid prototyping as a process, using a case study from China.
Tags: Prototyping, Agile methodology, Product testing
4. Selling the product
Country Process Guidelines for Microinsurance Market Development: This toolkit from the Access to Insurance Initiative offers an overall framework to assess the desired outcomes of a microinsurance development process.
Tags: Marketing strategy
EA Consultants’ blog post on Humanizing Large-Scale Services gives insights into developing an effective product marketing strategy.
Tags: Marketing strategy, Human touch
5. Servicing the product
Post-sales servicing
Where Net Promoter Score Goes Wrong: This Harvard Business Review article explains how to apply the NPS and gives answers to frequent questions about the tool.
Tags: KPIs, NPS, Client value, Sustainability
The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction: This article from McKinsey & Company describes how consistency is a necessary tool to make customers happy.
Tags: Client value
Monitoring execution vs. targets
Microfact: NGOs Belgian Raiffeisen Foundation (BRS) and Appui au Développement Autonome (ADA) have pooled their expertise to create Microfact, which offers monitoring and financial performance analysis tools that focus on building the capacity of microfinance institutions.
Tags: KPIs. Client value, Financial sustainability
Performance Indicators: ADA, BRS and the Microinsurance Network offer this handbook on KPIs to help evaluate the performance of microinsurance activities.
Tags: KPIs, Client value, Financial sustainability
Social Performance Indicators: ADA, BRS, the Microinsurance Network, Grameen Credit Agricole Microfinance Foundation offer this resource as a framework to evaluate and improve microinsurance products.
Tags: KPIs, Client value, Financial sustainability