Connecting the Layers: Risk Transfer Solutions from Households to Sovereign Resilience
Webinar
As climate and disaster risks become more frequent, severe, and complex, there is growing urgency to move from reactive crisis response to financing mechanisms that are arranged before shocks occur and can release funds quickly when they are needed.
Building on the 2025 G20 Compendium of Risk Transfer Solutions, this CGAP and UNCDF webinar will explore how risk transfer can evolve from isolated interventions into connected systems that link household-level insurance with sovereign risk financing. The discussion will examine what it takes to connect these layers in practice, including the institutional arrangements, incentives, and partnerships needed to make them work together.
The panel will bring together perspectives from inclusive insurance, sovereign risk pools, humanitarian anticipatory finance, and the private sector to discuss how risk transfer solutions can work together as part of a coherent risk financing system. Panelists will also discuss the roles the public and private sectors play in strengthening these linkages and expanding financial protection.
Speakers
Isaac Anthony has served as Chief Executive Officer of CCRIF SPC since January 2013. He has more than 25 years of senior-management experience across public finance, financial-sector supervision and economic planning, including senior roles in the Government of Saint Lucia. Under his leadership, CCRIF provides parametric insurance to Caribbean and Central American governments, offering rapid short-term liquidity when policies are triggered by hurricanes, earthquakes, excess rainfall and other covered hazards. He brings a sovereign-risk-pool perspective on payout speed, basis risk, and government use of pre-arranged finance.
Anna Farina leads crisis anticipation and risk finance at Start Network, a global network of NGOs working to make humanitarian action faster, earlier and more locally led. Her work focuses on designing and scaling systems that release funding before crises strike, including Start Ready, a pooled financing mechanism for climate-related hazards. She brings experience at the intersection of anticipatory action, disaster-risk financing and locally led humanitarian response, as well as earlier private-sector finance experience in banking, leveraged finance, M&A and restructuring.
Elias Omondi is Principal, Sustainable Insurance at FSD Africa and a seasoned financial-sector professional with more than 15 years of experience in actuarial science, insurance regulation and financial-market development. He leads programmes that catalyse risk-transfer solutions and strengthen enabling environments for African risk markets. His work spans climate resilience, innovation, inclusive insurance and regulatory reform. He has supported regulators and central banks across multiple markets and previously helped advance risk-based supervision, risk-based capital and insurtech innovation in Kenya.
Panayotis Koulovasilopoulos is Head of Climate and Resilience at Hiscox Re, where he works on agriculture reinsurance, disaster risk finance, risk pools, public and humanitarian sector insurance and reinsurance, parametric solutions, and initiatives that strengthen financial resilience to natural hazards and other catastrophic risks. He previously served as Senior Underwriter at Hiscox Re. He is a Guest Lecturer in UCL’s Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction and Chair of the Lloyd’s Disaster Risk Facility. Earlier in his career, Panayotis held actuarial and analytics roles at SCOR, including Portfolio Manager and Head of Lloyd’s Analytics, Lloyd’s Analyst and Actuary, and pricing-focused actuarial roles. Panayotis brings deep actuarial, underwriting and reinsurance expertise, with a strong focus on how private risk capital can support sovereign, humanitarian, meso-level and micro-level risk transfer solutions.
Dr Mpho Mathithibane is Business Head: Rest of Africa and Parametric Crop Insurance at Santam Specialist Solutions. He has 16 years of experience in financial services, with expertise spanning underwriting, reinsurance, business development, claims, financial and risk management. He has played a key role in the development of index-based insurance solutions in South Africa and is actively involved in expanding climate and agricultural risk transfer solutions across Africa.
Dr Mpho Holds a Doctorate in Business Administration and brings a practical and academic private-sector perspective on scaling risk transfer solutions, enhancing insurance accessibility, and connecting micro-level protection mechanisms with broader disaster risk financing frameworks.
Lepani Uluinaviti is a financial-system regulator at the Reserve Bank of Fiji, with experience across micro- and macro-prudential supervision of banking, insurance, superannuation and money transfer operators. He works on sustainable development finance, inclusive green finance, MSME finance, capital-market development and digital financial services, and supports implementation of Fiji’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy. He is closely involved in Fiji’s parametric microinsurance work under the InsuResilience Solutions Fund, including efforts to expand climate-risk protection for vulnerable households and communities.
Moderators
Anaar leads CGAP’s work on inclusive insurance, leveraging her strong experience leading programs in inclusive insurance.
Before joining CGAP in 2023, Anaar led Emerging Customer’s Public Private Partnerships and inclusive insurance programs for smallholders across the globe at AXA. Prior to this, she worked in agricultural investment for emerging economies as an investment officer at responsAbility Investments AG, and on various inclusive insurance projects, including climate insurance projects for smallholders during her tenure as Director of Development at PlaNet Guarantee. She has also worked for the World Food Programme and for IFAD on developing climate insurance for smallholder farmers.
A French and Canadian national, Anaar holds a master’s degree in Finance from Grenoble Ecole de Management, a bachelor’s degree in International Management from McGill University in Canada, and she is qualified as Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). She is based in Paris.
Krishnan Narasimhan is Lead Specialist and Programme Manager at UNCDF, where he leads the Climate Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Programme, He has more than three decades of experience in financial services, inclusive insurance, risk management and investments, across several emerging and developing economies. Krishnan has supported central banks across Pacific small island developing states on national financial inclusion strategies and led digital finance initiatives spanning mobile wallets, remittances and microinsurance. He pioneered microinsurance in the Pacific, first as Country Head of a life insurance company in Fiji and later with UNCDF, and helped launch the region’s first index-based microinsurance product through the Pacific Insurance and Climate Adaptation Programme. He is presently leading the work on setting up the Global Disaster Resilience Vehicle, jointly with Aon and also deploying the Insurance Guarantee & Financing facility for UNCDF across different markets.