INSURANCE TO IMPACT:
A Guide to Building Resilience
in a Hotter World
Our new guide, Insurance to Impact, draws on experiences working with more than 300,000 women through the Women’s Climate Shock Insurance and Livelihoods Initiative (WCSI). Incorporating real-life examples across South and Southeast Asia, Africa and North America, this short guide explains CRA’s pioneering approach to using insurance to protect women’s health, income and dignity as temperatures rise. Accessible and actionable, the guide is essential reading for practitioners, policymakers, donors and insurers working to close the heat protection gap and build resilience in communities worldwide. Read on to discover the unique scalable approach.
A New Model for Heat Protection – Insurance Alone is Not Enough
As policy makers around the world debate climate finance and development policy, women workers must still go about daily life on the frontlines of the extreme heat.
Through CRA’s Women’s Climate Shock Insurance and Livelihoods Initiative (WCSI), over 300,000 of those women are now protected by a recent financial innovation: parametric insurance for heat.
Insurance for extreme heat has been gaining increased attention in recent years, with other organizations increasingly starting to experiment with insurance policies and programs to help tackle rising temperatures, inspired by our successful 2024 program in India in partnership with the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). But the WCSI has clearly shown that insurance itself is not enough to really see impact in the lives of the people who are most affected. In this guide, Insurance to Impact: A Guide to Building Resilience in a Hotter World, CRA weaves together their experiences and evidence of working with women across three continents to identify the guiding principles for their approach that leads to insurance having a positive impact in people’s lives.
Why Read the guide?
This guide is the first of its kind: a practical, evidence-based, women-centered roadmap for designing extreme-heat livelihood insurance responsibly and effectively.
Whether you are a policymaker, donor, grassroots organization, insurer, or researcher, this resource will help you:
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Develop a deeper understanding of extreme heat and its impacts
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Utilize CRA’s four guiding principles for effective heat insurance, and;
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Understand the details of CRA’s scalable, real-world approach
Real Impact, at Scale
Developed through deep partnerships across South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and North America, and tested with hundreds of thousands of women, our Women’s Climate Shock Insurance and Livelihoods Initiative (WCSI) blends:
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Parametric heat insurance for the most severe conditions of extreme heat.
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Direct cash support when heat begins limiting health and income.
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Practical, women-designed risk-reduction tools such as cooling stations, protective equipment, and hydration support.
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Education and awareness like early warnings for heat and extreme heat and health training so women better understand heat risks and can adapt safely.
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Co-design with women, medical experts, meteorologists, insurers and others to ensure accuracy, trust, and cultural relevance.
In 2024, CRA and SEWA delivered financial protection to 50,000 women across India. 100% received cash support when temperatures hit 38°C, and 92% received insurance payouts at 41°C putting $600,000 USD directly and digitally into women’s bank accounts. In 2025, the program expanded nearly five-fold to reach 225,000 women in 34 districts, strengthening financial inclusion, confidence, and dignity.
Women describe the benefits as empowering, not only because they receive individual payouts, but because it brings a sense of agency, safety, and a belonging to the formal economy they have never experienced before.