"A holistic approach to micro-insurance - breaking the cycle of illnesses and debt"
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Banking on Social Change: Seeking Financial Solutions for All competition.
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Year initiative/program began:
2005
Field of work
Banking/Financial Services
If Field of Work is "Other" please define in 1-2 words below (and explain in detail in the entry form):
Service / Activity focus (If "other" please explain in entry form)
Delivery Method
Year organization founded (yyyy)
2002
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Project URL
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Non-affluent are not valued customers
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Leverage the stake individuals have in financial success of the group
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
This field has not been completed. (333 words or less)
Name Your Project
"A holistic approach to micro-insurance - breaking the cycle of illnesses and debt"
Describe Your Idea
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Healing Fields Foundation (“HFF”) has developed a holistic approach to micro health insurance by creating a preventive, financing and caring “ecosystem” for the underprivileged.
Describe what makes your idea unique—different from all others in the field.
Owing to our intense community focus, we provide an alternative financing mechanism suited to the needs of underprivileged communities. We research and profile the diseases, and co-design micro-insurance products with insurers. Further, we monitor healthcare providers and negotiate treatment rates with them.
Importantly, HFF empowers the underprivileged by providing health education, preventive care and facilitation services. This helps reduce healthcare expenditure and debts for healthcare, thereby stabilizing a family’s earnings. Therefore, we help them break their vicious cycle of illnesses and debt.
HFF has successfully reduced claim costs and improved health outcomes, which is important to develop a viable micro-insurance model. Globally, very few health insurance models have achieved this.
USAID and ILO acknowledge that our Healthcare Financing Delivery Project as the first of its kind in the world. This success has resulted in HFF being among 12 projects from Asia included for a study conducted and published by ILO.
HFF was also the finalist for “Best Service Provider Award”, 9th Asia Insurance Awards 2005 (among 600 companies).
How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
HFF integrates the underprivileged communities (members), private insurers, NGOs and hospitals into one social ecosystem through:
I. Prevention
Provides health education to foster community awareness to prevent illnesses and spread health insurance
II. Treatment
• Micro-insurance to finance treatment (instead of debt)
• Co-designs wider coverage products with insurers due to deeper understanding of community needs
• Distributes micro-insurance to members (with co-payment) through NGOs
• Networks with hospitals for better rates and services
III Follow-up/care
Employs full-time facilitators in network hospitals, to personally take care of members, and follow up at their homes
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how did you create them?
We believe in the power of fair partnerships in which diverse partners benefit by aligning their interests and sharing risks and returns. These partnerships are created through years of experience, hardwork and relationships built by our people.
1. Insurance Companies
HFF has MoUs with private insurance companies such as HDFC-GIC Limited.
2. NGOs
HFF has 20 NGO partners in its distribution system. They manage the members’ insurance premium pool and, with HFF’s support, purchase health insurance for members.
3. Hospitals
HFF has rated and empanelled 58 private hospitals/nursing homes to provide healthcare services to its members. We have also partnered with community and charitable hospitals
4. Professional Associations
• Ashoka FEC
HFF has partnered with Ashoka in its “Full Economic Citizenship” to build “Hybrid Value Chains” for underprivileged communities using collaborations between business and social organisations.
• Asian Micro Insurance Network and Community Lead Association for Social Security
• HFF is a part of and plays an active role in the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). We are also partnering with Social Impact.
5. Government
HFF has been invited by different government agencies to be part of the planning and brainstorming processes. For details, please refer to Mukti Bosco’s profile below.
6. Medical Community
HFF has interacted and tied up with different medical networks like CHAI and CMAI to develop sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships.
In which sector do these partners work? (Check all that apply)
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
Healing Fields Foundation seeks to make quality healthcare accessible and affordable to all people in India.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation.
This field has not been completed. (166 words or less)
Does your innovation address and/or change banking regulations?
Yes, HFF’s Healthcare Financing Delivery model addresses the banking regulations set up by the Indian Government.
Today, the Indian Government has recognised that along with credits and savings, the poor need insurance products too. The Government understands the importance of regulation in promoting micro-insurance. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (“IRDA”) through its act in 1999 stipulates that for non-life insurers, 5% of total gross premium income should come from the rural sector. HFF’s model helps these private insurers design the micro-insurance products and deliver them, without worrying about the delivery model or administration complexities.
Secondly, through its concept paper on “Need of regulations on Micro-Insurance in India”, IRDA emphasis the micro-insurance model, and incentivises self-help groups such as the ones set up by HFF in its tie-up with partner NGOs. For example, IRDA exempts these groups from mandatory examinations to setup insurance agencies. HFF utilises these incentives to benefit the poor communities by expanding the reach and penetration of its delivery model.
How many people does your innovation serve or plan to serve? Exactly who will benefit from your innovation?
HFF serves members from India’s informal rural and urban economies, mostly illiterate, daily wage earners and landless farm labourers dependent on seasonal agriculture. Their average annual family income is around Rs 28,000 (a meagre US$ 608). Nearly 80% take debt to meet hospitalisation expenses amounting to almost two months of income (excluding lost wages).
Till date, HFF has insured 46,663 such lives across 4 states in India with 10,200 policies (excluding renewed policies). HFF’s scope extends to this underprivileged population of India, nearly 250 million.
This Entry is about (Issues)
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
• USAID Grant (2004-2008): In February 2004, HFF approached USAID for financial support to implement the model that it had designed. Having recognised our Healthcare Financing Delivery Project is the first of its kind in the world, USAID decided to support HFF in the implementation of the model.
• Sedgwick Parekh Healthcare, one of the first few registered TPA’s in India, and Intelligroup Asia Private Ltd assist in the form of grants and domain knowledge (continued to date)
• Christian Aid (2002-2003): To sustain interest and develop our concept
• Individual board members
HFF model is based on program revenue generated through service fee for every policy from the insurer. However the health education component of our program still needs subsidies. Revenue is also generated through consultancy work done by HFF employees.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization:
• Annual budget
• Annual revenue generated: Rs 1,120,000 (US$ 24,360) earned premium and fees, projected to increase to Rs 7,218,750 (US$ 157,000) in 2010
• Number of staff (3 boxes: full-time, part-time, volunteers): All – 23 full-time, 2 part-time and 1 volunteer
What are the main financial barriers and how do you plan to address them?
Our model offers more services than most traditional Micro Health Insurance schemes. HFF’s focus on health education and awareness creation is labour-intensive and costly. Operating costs in our first year of operations were nearly Rs 2,300 per policy, reduced to Rs 1,000 with experience and scale. However, we intend to reduce it to Rs 100. Innovative solutions are needed to reduce distribution and training costs in order to make it a viable large-scale healthcare solution. This is important to achieve financial sustainability in order to scale up our model.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow the initiative?
We plan to expand the outreach and sustainability of the HFF model in other states of India. We plan to expand our reach by partnering with committed NGOs and insurers to ensure good penetration.
Our model would be sustained by spreading awareness and working closely with our partners (insurers, NGOs and hospitals) to assure lower enrolment fees and premiums, and better delivery of services. This would help increase the number of new enrolments and increase retention rates of existing micro-insurance policies.
Please select one
What was the motivation or defining moment that led to the creation of this innovation? Tell us the story.
This innovation stems from my voluntary experience in the districts in Andhra Pradesh in India, where I saw the degree to which people suffer. It was there I came across Yadamma…
Yadamma, 22 years, is a daily wage earner. Poor and uneducated, she underwent a hysterectomy at age of 18, on the advice of an unscrupulous medical practitioner. The family took a loan to pay for the surgery.
Later Yadamma was married but unable to bear children. She suffered psychological trauma and health problems stemming from the hysterectomy and poor post-operative care. She was abandoned by her husband as he felt that she was not a complete woman.
There are many people around us leading a different life parallel to the ones we lead. We see small children take care of their siblings, and work to earn a living for the rest of their family. I met Tahir working in a small roadside café near Hyderabad:
Tahir, (then 7 years old), lives in Hyderabad. His wages: Rs.100 ($2) per week and free meals. Then his father fell ill, and was hospitalized. The family took a loan from his employer. Today, Tahir works up to 18 hours a day to pay off the loan. His meals are cut down to just one a day and does not get paid anything. He no longer participates in literary and play activities organized by the NGO.
“If we had enough money to pay for hospitalization, Tahir’s life would have had some hope”, said his mother Hasina.
Please provide a personal bio of the social innovator behind this initiative.
Mukti Bosco
The Founder Secretary-General is a Fellow of the Ashoka Foundation. She has been invited by the Government of India to be part of the accreditation committee of the Govt of Andhra Pradesh to define ratings and accreditions of hospitals.
Mukti is also member of the IRDA subcommittee on Development of Micro Health Insurance in India. She is also an honorary member of the working sub group of Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) on micro health insurance.
a) Please identify the individuals that your innovation benefits (Please check all that apply)
Consumers , Holders of assets.
b) Do you help the people you serve to buy goods or services using financial innovation? If so, how?
Yes, HFF helps underprivileged communities buy micro-insurance using our innovative Healthcare Financing Delivery Project. Through the intervention of IRDA, private insurers are encouraged, through regulations, to cover health insurance needs of underprivileged communities. HFF facilitates this process, and helps poor communities purchase customised insurance products co-designed by HFF and private insurers by means of needs assessment surveys and disease profiling.
We connect the members to healthier lifestyles through our partnerships with NGOs and our training/awareness programs, and constantly remind them the importance of having health insurance. The poorest communities’ resources are severely stretched, so day-to-day survival is more of a priority than long term risk management. The premise behind our model is that through building awareness about the concept of insurance, these members will see the benefit in spending their limited funds on health insurance.
Our facilitators give personalised attention to the members in network hospitals and later at home, to ensure quality service which leads to new enrolments and renewals of micro-health insurance policies.
c) Do you help the people you serve to sell goods or services using financial innovation? If so, how?
This field has not been completed. (166 words or less)
 | Thien Nguyen-Trung said: I did my summer internship with Ashoka's Full Economic Citizenship Group helping Mukti Bosco at Healing Fields and after visiting the ... about this idea. - 453 days ago read more > |
| S Kumra said: Having worked in the insurance sector, I have seen that the perception of risk is missing or low even in the middle income communities ... about this idea. - 456 days ago read more > |
| S Kumra said: I have been a member of Women's Empowerment Committee in the National Service Scheme in Delhi. In my experience, I have learnt that ... about this idea. - 456 days ago read more > |
 | "A holistic approach to micro-insurance - breaking the cycle of illnesses and debt" has been chosen as a finalist in Banking on Social Change: Seeking Financial Solutions for All. - 456 days ago |
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