Crop Insurance Today November 2017 - 23

icy, information and claim software). The customer facing web portal, company document
management, accounting, customer relationship
management, claims reporting and management
are all tied together. Adjusters and agents have
real-time access to policyholder information, including latitude/longitude field designators and
GPS routing on their wireless enabled laptops /
tablets. iBISS is deployed in six countries using
six languages and is capable of handling transactions in four different currencies.

Digital Based Loss Adjustment
Thomas Gehrke of Vereinigte Hagel (Germany) and Hansueli Lusti of Schweitzer Hagel
(Switzerland) presented an overview of MODIS
("MObile DIgitale Schadenregulierung"), a Tablet PC based App developed to convert the entire
loss adjustment process to digital format to increase efficiency and decrease the time it takes to
adjust claims. The software has both online and
offline modes and can direct the flight path of
drones using GPS to evaluate crop damage within fields; multispectral photos are then automatically uploaded. Documents and forms can be
signed electronically and all data synchronized
with the home office. Loss adjustment manuals
are available electronically.
Back office personnel use a second software package with built-in mapping capabilities named QlickView to manage, evaluate, and
settle reported claims. PDF documents are automatically generated for communication with
insureds, thereby reducing printing and postage
costs, which offset the annual cost of the tablet
PCs. Data entry by both claims adjusters and
back office was reduced by 90 percent.

Overview of Crop Insurance
in Selected Countries and
Other Topics

The final day of the Congress included country-specific presentations covering aspects of
agricultural production and crop insurance in
Russia, China, France, and South America, with
an emphasis on index insurance.

Agricultural Insurance in China
Mike Xin of JLT Re (Hong Kong) provided a
brief overview and outlook for agricultural insurance in China. The central government supports
four distinct pilot programs for crops, livestock,
forest, and aquaculture. Premium volume grew
to $6.1 billion (U.S.) in 2016 as compared to $0.7

billion in 2007, with more than 30 companies
now participating in the program. A number of
companies have introduced weather index products based on rainfall, temperature, and wind
speed, while one company has developed its own
Revenue Insurance product for rice and wheat in
two districts near Shanghai. The primary difficulties with selling insurance in China include the
small size of many farms, adverse selection by
farmers insuring only the most vulnerable fields,
the absence of a futures market to support revenue insurance, and the lack of technical knowhow to develop aquaculture insurance products.

Crop Insurance in Russia
Mr. Korney Bizhdof, President of the National
Association of Agriculture Insurers (Russia) reviewed the history of the agricultural insurance
system in Russia as the country moved away
from a mandatory insurance scheme under the
USSR to a government-subsidized scheme in recent years. The program is still in its early phases
and market penetration is still low, with 6.9 percent of crop production and 6.3 percent of livestock production insured in 2016.

Winterkill
In addition to discussions of crop insurance
issues in selected countries, a discussion on the
use of weather data to support product design
and portfolio management for winterkill insurance was presented by Dr. Hanna Płotka of
SCOR P&C (Switzerland). Winterkill, a major
peril in northern Europe, is caused when a plant
is damaged through exposure to low temperatures in the winter, particularly when there is
little or no snow to protect the plant. The extent
of damage depends on temperature, snow cover,
the tolerance of the plant to winter conditions,
and whether the plant is sufficiently hardened
at the time cold temperatures occur. Dr. Płotka
discussed a variety of mechanisms that can result
in winterkill and characterized each in terms of
the snow depth threshold, minimum and maximum temperatures, and number of days with
these conditions within a predetermined event
window. The objective of the exercise was to link
meteorological data with historical loss events to
improve insurers' understanding of the risk.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crop Insurance Today November 2017