State-Funded Macro-Insurance Policy for Disaster Resilience: A Study on National Disaster Insurance Policy in Sri Lanka

Natural hazard-induced disasters are a common occurrence in many parts of the world. Though preventive steps are taken to lessen the effects of disasters, disasters still have an impact on the country’s social, economic and environmental aspects. Over the last decade, Sri Lanka has been affected by a variety of natural disasters. As a result of the catastrophic consequences of these incidents, more attention is being paid to disaster resilience. In 2016, ‘National Natural Disaster Insurance Policy (NNDIP)’ was established to cover for damages and compensate the victims of natural hazard-induced disasters. Although the policy was established, there are issues and challenges in the implementation and administration of the policy. To identify the issues and challenges, initially, literature was reviewed. To achieve the aim of the study which is to identify the issues and challenges in the NNDIP, a qualitative approach was followed with ten (10) expert interviewees. Content analysis was used to analyse the collected data. From the study, key challenges and issues were identified as loss adjustment and claim management, delay in processing claims, insufficient staff and lack of clear guidance on the claim process.