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Status: Planned (Enabled through adversarial disputes with predefined rulesets)

The core problem with micro-insurance

Micro-insurance is designed to cover:
  • small financial losses,
  • short-term risks,
  • high-frequency events,
  • users with limited access to traditional insurance.
But there’s a paradox:
The smaller the claim, the harder it is to resolve fairly.
Why?
  • Traditional claim reviews are expensive.
  • Human adjusters don’t scale for 2020–300 claims.
  • Automation alone can’t handle edge cases.
  • Users feel ignored or unfairly rejected.
As a result, many micro-insurance systems either:
  • auto-approve everything (risking abuse), or
  • auto-reject everything unclear (destroying trust).

Real-world micro-claim scenarios

These cases happen every day:
  • Flight delay insurance with disputed delay times.
  • Delivery insurance for lost or damaged packages.
  • Weather-based insurance with unclear local impact.
  • Device insurance with ambiguous damage causes.
  • Gig-economy insurance for short jobs or shifts.
  • Parametric insurance where conditions partially trigger.
Each claim is small —
but the trust impact is huge.

Why traditional insurance logic breaks down

For micro-claims:
  • Manual review costs more than the payout.
  • Centralized decisions feel opaque.
  • Appeals are slow or non-existent.
  • Users assume bias toward the insurer.
This creates a toxic loop:
  • Low trust → high churn
  • High churn → stricter automation
  • Stricter automation → more rejected claims

The missing layer: scalable, neutral judgment

Micro-insurance doesn’t need perfect accuracy.
It needs fair, explainable decisions at low cost.
Justly introduces a middle layer between:
  • fully automated payouts, and
  • expensive human adjusters.
A layer where:
  • disputes are rare but resolvable,
  • decisions are transparent,
  • costs stay proportional to claim size.

How Justly fits into micro-insurance systems

Justly acts as an on-demand dispute resolver. Typical flow:
  1. A claim is submitted.
  2. The system auto-processes it.
  3. If the claim is disputed, it is escalated to Justly.
  4. Evidence is submitted (photos, receipts, timestamps, sensor data).
  5. Independent jurors review the case.
  6. A ruling is issued.
  7. The payout contract executes the decision automatically.
No claims agents.
No back-and-forth emails.
No black-box decisions.

Example: delivery micro-insurance

  • A user insures a package for $50.
  • The package arrives damaged.
  • The insurer’s system flags the claim as “unclear”.
Instead of rejecting it:
  • The dispute is sent to Justly.
  • The user submits photos and delivery timestamps.
  • Jurors evaluate whether the damage matches transit issues.
  • The ruling:
    • approves full payout,
    • approves partial payout,
    • or rejects the claim with justification.
The result is enforced automatically.

Example: parametric weather insurance

  • A farmer has micro-insurance for rainfall.
  • Sensors report borderline data.
  • The claim is disputed due to conflicting sources.
Justly allows:
  • evidence from multiple oracles,
  • local context evaluation,
  • human interpretation where automation fails.
This avoids:
  • blind oracle dependence,
  • rigid yes/no logic.

Why this matters for insurers and protocols

For insurers
  • Lower operational costs.
  • Reduced fraud without blanket rejections.
  • Higher user trust and retention.
For users
  • A real chance to contest unfair outcomes.
  • Transparent decisions.
  • Faster resolutions.
For on-chain insurance protocols
  • Removes reliance on admin intervention.
  • Enforces rulings trustlessly.
  • Keeps systems decentralized under stress.

Micro-claims need proportional justice

Big insurance can afford:
  • lawyers,
  • adjusters,
  • long processes.
Micro-insurance can’t. Justly enables:
  • low-cost justice for low-value claims,
  • without sacrificing fairness or decentralization.

The takeaway

Micro-insurance fails when disputes are ignored.
It scales when disputes are cheap, fair, and enforceable.
Justly makes micro-claims:
  • economically viable,
  • socially fair,
  • technically enforceable.

Micro-claims are typically resolved using Tier 1, enabling fast and cost-effective evaluations that would be impractical in traditional insurance systems. See Dispute tiers.