Leadway, Flour Mills partner on agro-input, farm yield insurance

Leveraging on the technical expertise of international consultants, Pula Advisors, Leadway Assurance Company Limited has developed a crop insurance solution by partnering with a major input manufacturer in Nigeria, Flour Mills of Nigeria Limited, which manufactures Golden fertiliser.

Explaining the partnership, Mr Ayoola Fatona, Head, Agric and Micro Insurance/National Coordinator, Leadway Assurance, said bags of fertiliser produced by Flour Mills Nigeria are bundled with an area yield crops insurance product. 

Through the scheme, farmers who purchase the brand of fertiliser and register for such will automatically have insurance covers on their crop farms. 

If a loss therefore occurs during the planting season as a result of the elemental perils insured against, the farmers will get a replacement fertiliser as compensation to assist them to plant during the next planting season.

Leadway said the strategy was to distribute crop insurance products to rural farmers through crop input manufacturers, as this would create an additional incentive for them to sign up for insurance coverage. “This product was deployed on a proof-of-concept basis during the 2018 wet season farming programme in Kaduna and Kano states with rice, maize, soya beans and sorghum as the pilot crops.

“In all, over 1,000 rural farmers signed up for insurance during this pilot programme, with 12 of them receiving replacement fertiliser from Leadway Assurance and Flour Mills of Nigeria as a compensation for loss suffered on their farms,” Fatona explained to The Guardian.

During a recent payout event organised for the farmers, they expressed satisfaction on the benefits of the insurance solutions by Leadway Assurance in conjunction with Flour Mills Nigeria.

Leadway Assurance said it would upscale the scheme to other states of the federation during the in-coming 2019 wet season farming with the expectation that over 200,000 farmers would sign up for insurance during the period. The insurance firm reiterated its commitment to increasing the resilience of rural farming households to climate-related and national disasters using innovative and technology-driven insurance solutions.