The Facility was launched in 2008 with generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; additional funding has gratefully been received from several donors, listed below.

Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID)

The Facility received a grant from AusAID to develop, over 12 months, four to five curriculum modules that will serve as a knowledge and training reference point for practitioners and trainers in the microinsurance industry. The work will initially involve mapping research output, tools and course material, identifying gaps and revising materials for teaching purposes. The Facility will then package specific topics into technical guides and training modules.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy and productive lives. The Foundation's Financial Services for the Poor team believes that providing poor people with reliable access to a range of safe, affordable financial tools and services can be a powerful way to help them build healthier more financially secure lives. Financial Services for the Poor has been funding the ILO's Microinsurance Innovation Facility since 2008, supporting their efforts to find lower-cost, high-impact insurance products and more efficient delivery channels that provide high-value services to poor clients in a financially sustainable manner for insurers.
The Foundation supports much of the Facility's work, including its Innovation Grants, capacity building and knowledge management. These activities stimulate innovations in microinsurance across the world, share lessons learnt to improve client value, and support the business case for microinsurance.

Munich Re Foundation

The Munich Re Foundation stimulates dialogue and research on new ways to support risk prevention and risk management. The annual International Microinsurance Conference, which it co-organizes with the Microinsurance Network, offers a great opportunity for practitioners and academics to exchange and disseminate knowledge on microinsurance. The Facility received its support for the publication of Protecting the Poor: A Microinsurance Compendium (Volume 1 published in 2006; Volume 2 published in 2012).

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF)/
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

The Facility's Fellowship Programme forms the basis of its collaboration with the UNCDF and UNDP. Three Facility Fellows are working in the Pacific region, two of them with the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP) in Fiji and Papua New Guinea and one with the Inclusive Finance for the Underserved (INFUSE) project in Timor Leste. Both projects are funded in part by the UNCDF, and PFIP operates out of the UNDP Pacific Centre. In 2011, a regional training workshop on financial performance indicators was organized by PFIP and INFUSE in collaboration with the Facility and the Microinsurance Network.

Z Zurich Foundation

Zurich Insurance Group is a leading multi-line insurance provider with a global network of subsidiaries and offices, serving customers in more than 170 countries. The mission of its Z Zurich Foundation is to help individuals and communities understand and manage risk, leveraging the company's core strengths as an insurer. The Foundation contributed just over US$ 3 million exclusively for funding the Facility's fifth round of Innovation Grants.

These projects support technology and process innovations in areas that are central to the industry, such as health, agriculture, distribution, premium payments and client education, in order to build scale in an efficient way.