Singapore, 11 August 2026 - After a year of progress, the Southeast Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility’s (SEADRIF) 2025 Annual Report puts that experience to the test, asking a simple question: what does it take for development insurance to scale? The answer draws on lessons from delivering disaster risk financing across Southeast Asia.
SEADRIF’s work demonstrated how development insurance can move beyond pilots to operational systems: from launching the world's first sovereign parametric insurance product triggered by government-reported disaster impacts to delivering rapid payouts and laying the foundations for regional financial resilience.
Protecting What Matters: Scaling Disaster and Climate Risk Insurance Across Southeast Asia, the 2025 Annual Report, captures the lessons from that experience. It examines what enabled progress, where challenges remain, and what governments, development partners, and insurers must do to build sustainable financial protection across the region.
Key Themes in the Annual Report 2025:
- Advancing Product Innovation and Payout Delivery
SEADRIF deepened the protection provided to the government of Lao PDR and started preparation of new products.
- Developed #PEOPLE with Lao PDR, a world-first impact trigger based on the number of people affected by disasters as reported directly by the government.
- Renewed US$16 million in sovereign protection for Lao PDR and delivered a US$2 million payout within six days, bringing cumulative payouts to Lao PDR since 2023 to US$6.5 million.
- Mobilised US$10 million in private reinsurance capacity to support sovereign disaster risk protection in Lao PDR.
- Scaling Regional Resilience
Launched preparation of two new regional facilities to embed financial protection across sectors and countries.
- SEADRIF-SAFE to protect public infrastructure and the critical services they provide, and SEADRIF-RAISE, co-developed with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to scale up the regional agricultural insurance market, incentivize agricultural resilience investments, and strengthen food security.
- Signed a €4.7 million joint grant with the Global Shield Solutions Platform (GSSP) alongside three other regional risk pools, and trained 500+ officials across ASEAN on disaster risk financing.
Mr. Benedikt Signer, CEO of SEADRIF Insurance Company, said: “Southeast Asia has the capital, the mandate, and the expertise for development insurance to work. What's been missing is putting them together into protection at scale. In Lao PDR, we showed what that takes. Our priority now is to make effective disaster risk finance the norm across Southeast Asia, not the exception.”
About SEADRIF: Taking the Crisis Out of Disasters
SEADRIF is a regional platform established and owned by ASEAN+3 countries to strengthen disaster and climate resilience through pre-arranged financial protection and advisory support. It provides access to rapid and predictable funding when shocks occur, enabling governments to better manage disaster-related costs.
Through its regulated insurance company set up in Singapore, SEADRIF blends public and private capital to expand access to new forms of development insurance. Working closely with member countries, it co-designs solutions that are fit for purpose and scales them across sectors, geographies, and perils—helping protect people, economies, and futures across Southeast Asia.
For inquiries, please email: contact@seadrifinsurance.com.
For more information and updates, please visit seadrif.org.
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