19 Nov Agri: Crop cover for farmers
November 2020
At Safire Insurance, we are proud to continue our longstanding association with the agricultural sector with the launch of our new Agri: Crop product, which offers hail cover for crops and fruit. Whilst traditional hail and named peril insurance is offered this season, a broader range of cover and innovative risk management solutions will be available in future.
Agricultural insurance enables farmers to obtain credit and financing for investment in new technologies and equipment to enhance and sustain their productive capacity. It is therefore an important tool used by producers to ensure business continuity, to spur rural economic development and to modernise the agricultural sector.
Growing the income of farmers and reducing operating costs (through access to better technologies, climate-smart production, risk diversification and access to financial tools) are critical roles agricultural companies play within the South African agricultural industry.
Despite the challenges, Safire believes it is now the right time to enter the difficult crop insurance market.
In line with our slogan, “Short-term insurers, long term partners”, Safire Agri: Crop is exploring the latest technologies with a view to incorporating access to an online field monitoring platform for farmers and farmer collectives. It is envisioned that this platform will enable our clients to keep all the data needed to optimise yields at their fingertips, enabling them to:
- compare crop performance on different fields or analyse one specific field’s production over the past few years;
- identify problem areas as soon as they emerge for timely damage mitigation;
- prioritise action for those areas that need attention by providing insight into the current soil moisture conditions of fields and providing an aerial view.
Going forward, through partnerships, Safire plans to integrate crop insurance and input cost financial products to develop a total risk management plan suited to the specific needs of each individual producer’s operation.
Through risk financing optimisation, we are exploring options to assist our clients with:
- on-farm risk management planning: comprehensive identification, quantification, and mitigation of inherent risks in the business,
- the determination of the entity’s Risk Bearing Capacity (RBC): the financial ability to absorb unexpected risk-based volatility without compromising the ability to achieve key plans and strategies, and
- forecasting of expected losses: the analytical modelling of historic losses to predict what the expected losses will be in the future.
Food security for an ever-increasing world population, together with climate change and the challenge of the availability of water for crop production, will place a huge emphasis on production insurance instruments to manage risks. At Safire, we want to partner with our farmers to play our part in ensuring business continuity and food security for the benefit of all.