Fred Adriko—the 20-year old son of a FINCA Uganda Village Banking client—only learned his mother had taken out a credit life insurance policy with her FINCA loan when he received a payment of $650 after she was killed in a car crash in 2005. The benefit—over four months of income for an average Ugandan—will enable Mr. Adriko to take care of his family’s needs, at least until they can replace the income from his mother’s produce business. The insurance also covered his mother’s loan.

FINCA’s ten-year long strategic alliance with American Insurance Group Inc. (AIG) made Mrs. Adriko’s coverage possible. All FINCA clients in Honduras, Malawi, Nicaragua, Tanzania and Uganda—nearly 150,000 in all—are covered with FINCA/AIG policies. FINCA Mexico began covering its nearly 64,000 clients in January; all of them should be insured by midyear.

Mr. Adriko’s story was recently featured in a front-page Wall Street Journal article that focused on the rapid growth of affordable insurance coverage, known as “microinsurance,” for the poor in developing countries, primarily through relationships like that of FINCA and AIG.

Beyond the benefits of financial security that microinsurance provides FINCA clients, it also benefits them by teaching them greater financial sophistication—a “natural extension of our role,” Scott Graham, FINCA’s senior manager of strategic alliances, told the Journal.