A calculated risk: how donors should engage with risk financing and transfer mechanisms

Author(s): Poole, Lydia
Number of pages: 45 p.

OECD development co-operation working paper 17:

This report describes key features of risk financing and risk transfer, examines some of the current challenges at the contextual and programmatic levels as well as institutional challenges donors might face in engaging in risk financing and recommends a set of principles and policy approaches to guide future donor support and engagement.

It addresses the following questions: What is risk financing and why should donors care? What should donors do about providing insurance for the poor? Will insurance, and other types of risk financing, help boost resilience against shocks? Does it work always and everywhere? Risk financing as the solution for humanitarian crises: is this the future?