“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”. For Joan Lamm-Tennant, CEO and Founder of Blue Marble Microinsurance, this African proverb perfectly illustrates her company’s philosophy. 

 

With the aim of providing socially impactful, commercially viable insurance protection to the underserved, Blue Marble incubates and implements microinsurance ventures that advance food security, financial inclusion and microentrepreneurship. It is a consortium of nine insurance entities, each owning equal shares of the company. These entities compete against each other on the traditional markets, but have realized that if they want to be able to extend insurance to the bottom of the economic pyramid, they must collaborate.

 

Blue Marble has launched two microinsurance ventures in the agricultural sector, in Colombia and Zimbabwe. Both ventures rely on a bottom-up approach, working with experts from both inside and outside the insurance sector to determine the exact needs of insureds and implement suitable, innovative solutions.