The development objective for the South East Europe and Caucasus Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Project for Europe and Central Asia is to enable Europa Re, a catastrophe and weather-risk re-insurance facility, to develop new weather risk insurance and reinsurance products, automate insurance underwriting, pricing and claims settlement processes for such products, and increase public awareness of weather risk in participating countries. The project has two components. The first component is technical assistance. The component will finance the costs of equipment and technical services incurred in connection with carrying out the preparatory work needed for the development of weather risk insurance markets in Albania, FYR Macedonia and Serbia. Such preparatory technical activities include but are not limited to acquisition of weather risk stations, public information campaigns, regulatory assistance, and development of catastrophe risk models and weather risk indexes. The second component is project management. It will also provide some funding to cover the costs of project management incurred by Europa Re in connection with implementation of the grant.