Working with Clusters

The PMFBY program in India dictates that a single primary insurer covers all crop business within a collection of districts, called a "cluster." As the model and Touchstone Re are designed around the State-District scheme, special handling has been introduced to support insurance clusters. When using the import tool to distribute the aggregate liabilities from a submission, the input may be specified to cover a cluster, and the liability will be proportionally spread across the districts in that cluster according to AIR's understanding of actual crops planted in those districts.

AIR anticipates that the cluster definitions may change from year to year and would like to allow users to stay up to date with the latest information without waiting for AIR to release an update. Furthermore, users may be interested in performing sensitivity tests to changes in cluster definitions. To support these scenarios, a feature has been introduced to allow users to make changes to the cluster definitions.