10 November 2011: The Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), administered by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), is providing a US$5.5 million grant to develop the disaster and weather-risk insurance market and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change in Albania, FYR Macedonia, and Serbia.

The grant will: support actuarial and probabilistic country weather and climate risk assessments that are necessary to develop insurance pricing and underwriting guidelines; fund the implementation of regulatory frameworks to ensure that disaster and weather risk insurance products comply with national laws; and acquire weather reporting in order to provide timely readings of temperature and precipitation.

The grant complements other finance by the World Bank, the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR), and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). In coordination with UN/ISDR, the World Bank has already financed over US$17 million in membership contributions and technical assistance funding to the Facility. SECO provided US$4.5 million in funding to help with the technical and regulatory work required to develop disaster and weather risk insurance products. [World Bank Press Release] [Climate Change Policy & Practice Story on World Bank Loan for Disaster Insurance in the Balkans]