Protecting aquaculture in Taiwan against extreme rainfall

In Taiwan, we helped develop the first parametric insurance solution for aquaculture, jointly with Taiwan Fire & Marine Insurance. The programme will offer protection against extreme rainfall risk to 120 000 hectares of onshore fisheries in Ping Tung County, which together produce 25 million kilogrammes of grouper annually.

Grouper is one of the expensive fish breeds in Ping Tung County and represents a significant economic asset in Taiwan’s aquaculture industry. As the 2009 typhoon season showed, however, fish ponds can suffer badly from extreme rainfall. Flash floods due to typhoons caused many fish ponds to overflow then, destroying nearly 50% of the fisheries in the process and causing large financial losses.

Using meteorological data, this innovative aquaculture insurance solution pays out automatically when there is rainfall of more than 480 mm for two consecutive days. It is the second programme we have helped develop for the Taiwanese agricultural sector, in response to the government’s initiative to transfer agricultural risks to re/insurers. Allowing for quick payouts through its index-based trigger, the scheme helps to improve the sector’s resilience. It has attracted strong interest and demand from the fish farming community in Taiwan, and it is hoped that it will benefit further Asian countries in the future.