Bundled agricultural loans and insurance unlock financial inclusion for Odisha’s farmers

14 JULY 2025 (LAGUNA, Philippines) — “Bundling agricultural credit with crop insurance has the potential to expand rural financial markets for smallholder and marginalized farmers in Odisha,” stated Dr. Patrick Ward of the University of Florida during the SIRS Seminar on the “Impacts of an innovative credit + insurance bundle for marginalized farmers: Evidence from a cluster randomized trial in Odisha, India.”

Their research team partnered with Dvara E-Registry (DER), an award-winning social enterprise in India, to offer a bundle consisting of a KhetScore loan and insurance to enable smallholder rice farmers to invest in their crop production while protecting them from loss of collateral or defaulting on loan repayment in the event of crop failure. DER pioneered KhetScore, a platform that assesses smallholder farmers’ production or profitability potential using a 3-year historical index of land analytics through remote-sensing data, artificial intelligence, and in-house algorithms. Aside from this, the team provided product trainings and informational sessions to the primary client and the co-signatory, which is another member of the opposite sex from their respective households.

“Financial inclusion and risk management are imperative for smallholder farmers to be able to invest in their agricultural production,” explained Ward. By bundling the loan with insurance, the initiative aims to alleviate credit constraints, such as a lack of a formal credit report, collateral, or documented land rights. In this case, the insurance payout is triggered when the farmer’s crops are affected by catastrophic disasters, enabling farmers to repay lenders. Cyclones and flooding frequently devastate smallholder farmers’ plots of land, particularly in the Jajpur district, a low-lying coastal plain. This is why smallholder farmers who reside there lack access to credit due to the high risks involved in farming within the…