Disaster Risk Insurance - B-Ready Programme Enhancing Support for Scale Oxfam Novib, Plan International and Global Parametrics are implementing the B-Ready Program that was financed by an innovation grant from the Dutch Relief Alliance and will finalise by the end of December 2020. The B-Ready programme is a pilot pro-active humanitarian aid program, by which selected households in Salcedo Easter Samar will receive aid directly, via their mobile wallets, prior to a disaster level tropical cyclone occurring. Satellite data analytics on climatic patterns and weather forecasts and risk modelling technologies will be used for early warning systems to trigger pre-disaster humanitarian cash transfers to vulnerable households.
On the ground evidence building and a user-based monitoring will enable deep and transferable learnings on how these direct ‘pre-payments’ build resilience, enable choices and help the most vulnerable diverse community groups meet their needs based on their own priorities in the case of a disaster. Monitoring activities will be ongoing during pre-disaster times using forecasts and disaster modelling that will inform triggers and the different action plans they would entail or require. This would look to particularly support women and children who are often disproportionately impacted in these situations to decide themselves or have input on how best to use the ‘pre-payments’. This can ensure that issues often faced by women and children such as increases in GBV particularly in evacuation centres, school drop outs, reduced access to services and resorting to negative coping strategies such as transactional sex, child labour or using predatory loan sharks can be better managed. It is envisaged that with additional targeted support further enhancing the forecast indices, tools for replicability, and evidence of how the programme works, this programme could scale nationally, internationally and for other disasters from natural hazards and climatic events. 
Global Parametrics will be providing the forecasting via its unique ability to model the impact of disasters from natural hazards in disaster prone areas and create parametric ‘impact indices’. The parametric models that Global Parametrics builds can also be structured into financial services, this could potentially mean that the private sector could share in financing resilience/recovery activities via insurance like services.
Plan International and Oxfam Novib have decades of experience working in Philippines with strong connections to communities, Local Government Units (LGUs) in the intervention areas, and national stakeholders working in Disaster Risk Reduction and Management. This also includes links to different community representatives such as leaders from women, indigenous and youth groups. The organisations are providing the link to communities to identify differentiated needs, gaps and how forecast based financing would work in the local context. Plan and Oxfam are carrying out inclusive community engagement work to introduce the concepts and aims of forecast based financing ensuring consideration of needs and vulnerabilities of different age, gender and ability groups before, during and after disasters. This includes looking at how decisions are made within households as well as barriers to accessing financial services that will enable equitable uses of pre-emptive funds to meet different priorities. The work also includes capacity building of local government and financial institutions to be able to deliver pre-payments to identified vulnerable communities.