UNDP Financial Resilience in Agriculture (FRA) Initiative
Bangladesh's agriculture sector supports the livelihoods of millions of smallholder crop farmers, livestock keepers, fish farmers, and coastal fishing communities. However, the sector remains highly exposed to climate shocks, disease outbreaks, and extreme weather events. Despite these growing risks, access to formal agricultural insurance remains negligible, leaving producers with limited capacity to recover from losses and constraining long-term resilience. Previous agricultural microinsurance initiatives in Bangladesh achieved limited sustainability due to fragmented implementation, inadequate demand assessment, insufficient co-development with stakeholders, and weak government ownership.
The UNDP Financial Resilience in Agriculture (FRA) Initiative, under the Insurance and Risk Finance Facility (IRFF), seeks to address these challenges by supporting governments and market actors to build inclusive and sustainable agricultural insurance systems. Operating across 29 countries, FRA promotes a transition from donor-driven pilot projects to institutionalized, government-led agricultural insurance programmes embedded within national systems.
In Bangladesh, the FRA Initiative is implemented in partnership with the Department of Livestock Services (DLS), the Department of Fisheries (DoF), and the Local Government Division (LGD), while also supporting the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority (IDRA) on policy and regulatory strengthening. Technical implementation is supported by Innovision Consulting Private Limited, Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS), Wageningen University & Research (WUR), and other global UNDP technical partners.
A defining feature of the Bangladesh programme is its government-led Hackathon approach, which repositions government from a recipient of externally designed solutions to the leader of the innovation process. Government agencies identify priority risks, define demand for insurance solutions, and jointly design implementation pathways with insurers, technical partners, financial institutions, aggregators, NGOs, and other market actors. This collaborative approach strengthens government ownership, promotes market-driven product innovation, enhances coordination across institutions, and establishes the foundation for sustainable, scalable agricultural insurance systems embedded within national programmes.
The Hackathon follows a structured three-stage co-creation process that brings together the entire agricultural insurance ecosystem:
Stage 1: Specify the Demand—Government agencies identify priority risks, target beneficiaries, and define feasible insurance demand packages based on national development priorities and sector needs.
Stage 2: Co-develop Insurance Value Chains – Public and private stakeholders jointly design insurance products, delivery channels, data and technology solutions, financing mechanisms, and institutional arrangements required for implementation.
Stage 3: Reflect, Assess and Adapt – Stakeholders review prototype solutions, validate assumptions, identify implementation gaps, and refine business and operational models prior to pilot implementation.
The first Hackathon has been successfully completed, bringing together government agencies, UNDP, and technical partners to identify and prioritize feasible insurance demand packages across the livestock, fisheries, and local government sectors. These outputs now provide the foundation for the second Hackathon, where stakeholders will co-design integrated insurance value chains, operational models, and implementation arrangements that are technically robust, commercially viable, and institutionally owned by government. This process represents a significant shift from project-based interventions toward a nationally owned agricultural insurance ecosystem capable of delivering long-term resilience for Bangladesh's agricultural sector.
EoIs will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
Up to 5 insurers or consortia will be shortlisted following this EoI, with the strongest 3 solutions from Hackathon Workshop 2 awarded contracts to proceed to pilot.
Complete all sections below. Responses must be in English. Where word limits are specified, stay within them. Reviewers will not read beyond the stated limit. All fields are mandatory unless marked optional. A consortium must nominate one Lead Applicant who submits on behalf of all partners.
Queries: tahmeed.rifa@innovision-bd.com
All EoIs will be reviewed by a panel comprising representatives from MoFL, DoF, DLS, LGD, UNDP, and technical partners. Up to five insurers or consortia will be selected to participate in Hackathon Workshop 2. Results will be communicated by 23 July 2026.
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