Administering crop insurance in Asian countries with small fragmented agriculture land holdings is an expensive affair, but costs can be substantially lowered with the introduction of index-based or parametric insurance schemes. These are managed, however, through relatively generic data measurements that do not always capture the experiences of individual farmers. The introduction of new data technology services into agriculture, in the form of increased sensor data volume, refined data processing, and far greater mapping accuracy, can all provide a far more detailed picture of risk at a farm level, without the costs of collecting such data manually. Technology can provide a rich source of underwriting and loss assessment data for insurers to improve their index as well as indemnity products. Joint efforts are, however, necessary to ensure that data remains accessible in order to reap the full benefits.

Source - www.swissre.com