CCRIF to “stay true” to parametric roots of providing “quick payouts”

The CCRIF SPC (formerly known as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) has said that it intends to “stay true” to its roots of providing parametric insurance protection, while expanding the range of products offered and continuing to provide “quick payouts.”

The CCRIF SPC announced the retirement of Milo Pearson who chaired CCRIF’s board from its inception in 2007 and the appointment of Timothy Antoine as the new Chairman of CCRIF SPC, effective July 1st for a 3-year term yesterday.

Under Pearson’s watch the CCRIF has grown its parametric risk pool, which now stands at 19 countries (18 from the Caribbean and 1 from Central America), expanded its product offering and continued to tap the global reinsurance and capital markets for the most efficient protection.

The CCRIF has also paid out to policyholding members sums totaling $130.5 million across 36 payments in its eleven year history so far.

Antoine, the Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), commented on his appointment, “I thank Milo Pearson, our longstanding chairman, for his sterling service to CCRIF and extend best wishes to him in his well-earned retirement. I look forward to working with my fellow Board members and our CEO, in this new capacity, as together we take CCRIF into its second decade and increase its impact on improving disaster risk management and building resilience in our region.”

The CCRIF said that it intends to “place a strong focus on scaling up the Facility” as governments in the region have “been given added impetus” having witnessed the impacts of recent hurricanes and seen the fast payouts offered by the CCRIF coverage.

The parametric nature of the CCRIF’s product range is key to its ability to offer disaster response and recovery protection through its products, enabling policyholding countries to benefit from the efficiencies of risk pooling and reinsurance as well as the rapid payouts within 14 days of an event occurring.

This will continue to be the CCRIF’s focus, the organisation said, and its new strategic plan for 2018-2021 will concentrate on scaling up the facility as well as the addition of planned new products for drought, fisheries, agriculture, and other sectors where insurance cover for natural hazards is not as easily available.

The CCRIF has looked at product ideas including, drought insurance, cover for industries such as agriculture and fisheries, as well as coverage for public utilities such as power and telecoms, and covers for other industries such as tourism.

All of these new initiatives will be undertaken with the CCRIF keeping aligned to its mandate to “stay true to its core business of providing affordable parametric insurance products and quick payouts to members when their policies are triggered,” the facility said.

One way forward for the CCRIF may be to continue offering its parametric sovereign level products, plus the new more commercially or SME focused parametric risk transfer as well, while also becoming a risk pooling facility for local microinsurance arrangements, which would help it to become a much broader and more diverse risk pool.

This would allow the CCRIF to increase its ability to leverage reinsurance capital to make risk transfer more efficient for those in the Caribbean and Central American region, while also supporting provision of insurance products to a wider range of people.

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