Abstract: Due to the transparent information and simple process, the index insurance is an important direction for future development of agricultural insurance. Many countries and international organizations have invested large quantity of human and financial resources to conduct researches, experiments and promotions in this field. Currently, agricultural development index insurance is still faced with such challenges as large basis risks, difficult index selection, lower market awareness, and so on. In view of such issues as simple types of index of China’s agricultural index insurance, over-reliance on subsidies, narrow sales channels, etc., this paper suggests that the future focus should centre around expanding the scope of index research and development, exploring the sales mechanism of index products, and innovating the profit model for index products.

Key words: agricultural insurance; index insurance; technical advantages