SEADRIF pushes Southeast Asia disaster insurance beyond pilots

Lao PDR received $2m within six days.

The Southeast Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility (SEADRIF) has set out what it will take to scale development insurance across the region, in its 2025 Annual Report.

The report, "Protecting What Matters: Scaling Disaster and Climate Risk Insurance Across Southeast Asia", draws on a year of delivering disaster risk financing across Southeast Asia, examining what has worked, where challenges remain, and what governments, development partners and insurers need to do next. 

SEADRIF said the past year showed how development insurance can move beyond pilot schemes to operational systems, citing what it describes as the world's first sovereign parametric insurance product triggered by government-reported disaster impacts.

SEADRIF deepened its protection for the government of Lao PDR and began preparing new products. 

It developed #PEOPLE with Lao PDR, described as a world-first impact trigger based on the number of people affected by disasters as reported directly by the government. 

It renewed $16m in sovereign protection for Lao PDR and delivered a $2m payout within six days, taking cumulative payouts to the country since 2023 to $6.5m. 

It also mobilised $10m in private reinsurance capacity to support sovereign disaster risk protection there.

On regional resilience, SEADRIF began preparing two new facilities: SEADRIF-SAFE, to protect public infrastructure and the services it provides, and SEADRIF-RAISE, co-developed with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, aimed at scaling up the regional agricultural insurance market, encouraging resilience investment and strengthening food security.