Day 2 – Session C1: Innovating Microinsurance: Strengthening Financial Resilience for Vulnerable Communities
Arup Chatterjee, Principal Financial Sector Specialist, ADB
Arup Chatterjee is Principal Financial Sector Specialist with the Finance Sector Office at the Asian Development Bank's Headquarters in Manila. As a practice lead for capital markets, contractual savings, and insurance, he guides financial sector development programs for addressing climate and disaster risks and mainstreaming and scaling up climate finance into ADB's operations, lending, and advisory services. Arup has previously served at the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India and the Ministry of Finance in India, where he led work promoting a sound, progressive and inclusive financial sector. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Delhi University, Arup has also undertaken specialized courses at NYU Stern School of Business and the University of Cambridge. He is an active blogger and regularly contributes to newspapers and journals on contemporary topics
Maria Mateo, Chief Executive Officer, IBISA Network, Luxembourg
Maria Mateo Iborra is the co-founder and CEO of IBISA, a global climate insurtech with headquarters in Luxembourg, pioneering parametric insurance to build financial resilience against climate volatility. With a background in Telecommunication Engineering and an Executive MBA, she brings over 15 years of experience at the intersection of space, data, and inclusive finance.
Maria began her career in the satellite industry in 2005, developing a deep technical foundation in Earth Observation. Rooted in her family’s agricultural heritage and driven by the growing impacts of climate change, she launched IBISA in 2019. Since then, she has scaled the company across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
She sees climate insurance as a foundational enabler of sustainable finance. Her work ranges from protecting rooftop solar generation to unlocking balance-sheet resilience for farmers, gig workers, MSMEs, financial institutions, and the public sector. Today, she focuses on embedding insurance into broader financial systems—making climate protection simple, transparent, and scalable.
Sabbir Patel, CEO and Managing Director, International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation Foundation
Sabbir joined ICMIF in 1996, starting work on a member directory and the company’s finances. He then also worked on investment and agricultural networks, website, conference sponsorship, the ICMIF Series of Mutual Funds and Development. In 2004, he took over as Managing Director of ICMIF’s capital support facility Allnations Inc. making investments in ICMIF members in Africa and Latin America.
In 2005, he was appointed Senior Vice-President, Emerging Markets and Chief Financial Officer, taking responsibility of the emerging markets department as well as the Federation’s finances. Throughout his tenure, member partnerships were facilitated through annual seminars on microinsurance, a regular newsletter and technical exchanges. He oversaw a unique global cooperation with the Takaful sector including joint conferences, newsletters, an ICMIF Takaful website and the promotion of the concept of microtakaful. In 2010, with the support of the ICMIF Development Committee, an ICMIF microinsurance training tool was developed and successfully run across the globe for different stakeholders. He also represented ICMIF in working with the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) to develop guiding principles and an application paper for the regulation of mutual microinsurance.
In 2015, Sabbir was appointed CEO of the ICMIF Foundation to lead the ICMIF 5-5-5 Mutual Microinsurance Strategy which has issued over three and a half million policies to date, providing protection to the lives and livelihoods of over 17 million people. In 2022, a partnership between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the ICMIF Foundation was established, and the first round of the UNDP ICMIF Innovation Insurance Challenge (IIC) was launched, providing financial and technical support to scale up mutual microinsurance.
Sabbir is a qualified chartered certified accountant (FCCA) and holds a Master’s degree from the Institute of Development and Policy Management (IDPM), Manchester and a CII Diploma in Insurance. He has represented the sector on many global platforms and committees and written numerous articles on mutual microinsurance and microtakaful.
Lorenzo Chan, President and CEO, Pioneer Inc.
Lorenzo Chan Jr. is President and CEO of Pioneer Inc. in the Philippines, the holding company of the Pioneer Group of insurance companies. Throughout his career at Pioneer, where he honed his expertise in both general and life insurance, he had always envisioned providing every Filipino with the insurance they needed. Seeking to make the often-overlooked lower end of the social pyramid more risk-resilient, Lorenzo has led significant initiatives, most notably the development of "bite-sized" or sachet insurance tailored for middle- and low-income markets, resulting in Pioneer's leadership in the microinsurance sector with over 30 million enrolments.
Lorenzo is committed to proving that profitability and purpose are not mutually exclusive. Under his stewardship, inclusive insurance remains a core offering of all Pioneer companies within the group, proving it to be a viable business line, one that has earned global recognition.
His pioneering work in microinsurance has made him a sought-after speaker at international forums. A staunch advocate for inclusive insurance, he co-authored a book titled Covering Nanay: The Philippines Microinsurance Journey. Launched in 2024, this well-reviewed, best-selling book, now in its second printing, has been described as empowering, inspiring and “better than any microinsurance handbook available to date.”
Outside Pioneer, he became the first practitioner and Asian to chair the Luxembourg-based Microinsurance Network. This non-profit, global multi-stakeholder platform promotes inclusive insurance for low-income households worldwide. He also served on the Advisory Committee on Climate Resilience of the World Bank's Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a global partnership working to advance the lives of people experiencing poverty through financial inclusion.
Rauna Mehtak, Co-Founder and CEO, Igloo
Raunak Mehta is Co-Founder and CEO of Igloo, a Singapore-based regional nsurtech firm that enables smart, digital insurance for the Internet economy. Igloo has facilitated close to 1 billion policies since 2019 and works with over 75 partners across the region.
Raunak has extensive experience in the e-commerce and technology space, having helmed leadership roles at some of Asia’s biggest e-commerce brands such as Flipkart and ZALORA Group.
Joining Igloo in 2018 as Chief Commercial Officer, Raunak has spearheaded the company’s market entry into Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, while establishing partnerships with industry leaders such as Lazada, Shopee, Bukalapak, AIS, CircleK and GCash, Foodpanda across a range of insurance products.
Raunak holds a Master of Business Administration in International Business from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.
Tserendejid Purevjav, Senior Referent at Insurance Market Department, Financial Regulatory Commission of Mongolia
P. Tserendejid is an economist and mathematician, and graduated from the Korean Development Institute (KDI) with a master's degree in public policy.
She worked as a specialist, senior specialist, deputy head of the department, and head of the Insurance Policy and Planning Department at the Financial Regulatory Commission, and is currently working as a senior referent in charge of insurance registration and licensing unit of the Insurance Market Department, FRC, Mongolia. She has over 20 years of experience in the insurance industry.
P. Tserendejid worked on the working group of the Law on Insurance and the draft laws on Insurance Professional Participants,and actively participated in the discussion and approval by the Parliament.