Jerry Skees

With a career of 35 years as a professor at the University of Kentucky, Jerry and his previous firm, GlobalAgRisk, have been on the forefront of many important innovations in low and middle-income countries relating to weather and seismic risk. He led the development of the first index insurance product for a US crop insurance program in 1991, leading to work on weather index insurance with the World Bank in the mid-1990s. Jerry was instrumental in developing the globally acclaimed Index-Based Livestock Insurance Program in Mongolia and in providing core research in Ethiopia that led to the African Risk Capacity facility. He was key in developing the world’s first regulated insurance product in Peru paying before a disaster, coined forecast insurance and laying the foundation for ongoing global efforts on forecast-based financing.