This book is organized into six parts. The first part, Principles and Practices, defines micro insurance, provides insights into the risk-management needs of low-income households and explains the critical social protection function of micro insurance. Part 2 summarizes lessons about specific types of products, namely health insurance, long-term life insurance and short-term insurance linked to savings and credit products. This part also explores the adaptation of insurance products to address the characteristics of women and children. The third part of the book explores micro insurance operations in detail. It includes chapters on product design, marketing, premium collection, claims, pricing, financial and risk management, governance, organizational development and loss control. It concludes with a chapter on benchmarking that examines performance ratios of the micro insurance schemes. Micro insurance can be delivered through a variety of institutional arrangements. Part 4 examines these arrangements to analyze the conditions in which one might be preferable to the others. These chapters consider the partner-agent model, the community-based approach, insurance companies owned by networks of savings and credit cooperatives, retailers as distribution channels, and microfinance institutions. One chapter analyses the advantages, disadvantages and conflicts of interests of various organizational arrangements for delivering health insurance. Part 5 assesses the role of key stakeholders, including donors, regulators, governments, insurers, and technical assistance providers. The book concludes with part 6, which summarizes the strategies needed to achieve the right balance between coverage, costs and price, and provides an outlook on future developments in micro insurance.