CGAP Working Group on Microinsurance Good and Bad Practices: La Equidad Seguros, Colombia, Case Study No. 12

La Equidad Seguros was created 35 years ago as a cooperative with the mission to provide insurance services to cooperatives and their members, who were largely low-income workers outside the scope of traditional Colombian insurers. Today, La Equidad ranks 13th by level of premiums issued among 21 life insurers and 20th among all 29 insurers. At the end of 2004, its total premiums issued amounted to US$83 million.

Since its inception, La Equidad offered life protection coverage to cooperatives’ members, both as debtors and as savers. La Equidad’s group life insurance protected the cooperatives’ loan portfolio: The debt dies with the debtor was a common slogan of cooperatives, particularly credit unions. Members’ savings also had life insurance coverage in the case of death or permanent disability. La Equidad has continued to expand products for the lower-end of the market, particularly to specialized microfinance institutions and their clients. This case study focuses on these new activities.

This paper was commissioned by the “Good and Bad Practices in Microinsurance” project. Managed by the ILO’s Social Finance Programme for the CGAP Working Group on Microinsurance, this project is jointly funded by SIDA, DFID, GTZ, and the ILO.