There is a growing consensus among development community that the risk insurance can provide an effective risk management tool for mitigating the impacts of climatic and non-climatic disasters. Several risk insurance initiatives have been implemented at grassroots level for reducing the vulnerability of communities to disasters in most of the countries in Asia and the Pacific over the years. Despite these grassroots efforts, the penetration of risk insurance is poor in the developing Asia Pacific compared to many developed countries in the region due to several barriers that this sector is facing. Keeping this in view, this reconnaissance study was carried out to assess the benefits accrued through community level risk insurance experiences in some of the developing countries, evaluate barriers limiting the penetration of crop insurance, and identify interventions for greater risk insurance penetration leading to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. It is evident from the study that the countries are at different levels of developing agriculture insurance programs and institutional mechanisms with Philippines at the fore front followed by Vietnam and Malaysia. The growing disaster losses and related burden on government has been the clear driver of insurance in all the study countries. Though Malaysia has long experience of implementing insurance for industrial crops, the insurance has entered into agriculture only very recently with the promulgation of the new government crop insurance program. Being an early bird, one could find a diverse insurance approaches in Philippines mostly spearheaded by the public insurance institutions with strong public-private partnership. The government of Vietnam showed a constant spirit of making insurance work in the country with one of the longest unsuccessful history with agriculture insurance. Structured questionnaire surveys with farmers have revealed several important insights into the effectiveness of crop insurance on the ground. Government compensation has still been an important means of relief and recovery from natural disasters in areas without insurance and to certain extent in areas with insurance mostly due to limited coverage of perils or limited damage coverage by the current insurance products. Responses did reflected the presence of mismatch between compensations, insurance pay outs and farmers expectations and it has an interesting linkage with the way the insurance products are understood by farmers; a clear indication for the need o strengthen the public awareness programs before enrolling into insurance schemes. In areas with insurance, the farmers have reported the presence of grievance redress mechanisms but the response on these mechanisms was mixed with most rating it as unsatisfactory in Philippines. Cost of insurance appeared to be the single most important determinant of buying insurance. Irrespective of whether the insurance is completely subsidized or not, majority of respondents, whether currently participating in insurance or not, have preferred that the insurance be fully subsidized. High proportion of currently enrolled beneficiaries preferred full subsidization of insurance compared to the non-beneficiaries in Vietnam. The insurance payments were mostly either timely or timely enough to recover. Most farmers were not sure about the damage assessment procedures adopted by the insurance companies and were overwhelmed by the claim procedures. In areas where insurance is present, insurance did helped farmers to recover but the respondents felt that the insurance did not completely compensate their loss. Insurance did not completely stop most farmers borrowing from a formal lending institution or from family and friends after a disaster.