This compendium serves as a practical guide and call to action for G20 countries and partners to scale up the use of risk transfer solutions that enable faster, more equitable financial protection before and after climate-related events. Despite increasing innovation and availability, significant protection gaps persist in 2024, only 344 million people were covered by microinsurance products across 37 countries—representing just 11.5% of a total addressable market of nearly 3 billion people. With climate- and crisis-related events becoming more frequent, intense, and complex, pre-arranged risk finance mechanisms—such as parametric insurance, micro/meso/macro-level index insurance, regional risk pooling, anticipatory-action-linked risk transfer, and shock-responsive social protection—are increasingly vital. These tools not only reduce the burden of post-crisis debt and fiscal instability but also protect vulnerable populations and promote long-term resilience.

The compendium showcases diverse global and regional models, emphasizing how these instruments function across macro (sovereign), meso (aggregator), and micro (household) levels. It explores technical design, delivery pathways, and how such mechanisms can complement national systems for disaster risk reduction (DRR), public finance, health systems, and social protection. A risk-layering approach—blending insurance, contingency funds, reserve financing, and credit—ensures coverage across small to large-scale shocks.

Key case examples illustrate impact at scale, including:

• ARC Replica payouts in Zambia and Zimbabwe, which provided anticipatory food assistance to 430,000 people.
• The Pacific Governance for Resilience approach, integrating climate risk into budget and investment planning.
• The Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund (ZRBF), which combined long-term resilience with a Crisis Modifier Mechanism triggered seven times across 18 districts;
• Community-based models like South Africa’s STOKVELS and localized contingency frameworks.

The compendium also emphasizes equity and accountability, recognizing the disproportionate risks faced by women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, and informal workers. Sections have been updated to reflect challenges in index-based insurance, highlight the importance of financial system strengthening, and advocate for alignment with other G20 DRR Working Group deliverables such as the Recovery Readiness Framework and High-Level Principles on DRR Financing.

In line with recent global reports, this document reinforces the call to increase the share of pre-arranged crisis finance tenfold within a decade shift necessary to deliver on the commitments of the Sendai Framework, Paris Agreement, and G20 priorities on resilient development.