Haiti’s CCRIF premiums funded by CDB, signs up for excess rainfall cover

The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), a financial institution that assists Caribbean nations in financing social and economic programs within the countries, is financing Haiti’s policies under the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility again.

The CDB is providing a grant of $2.57m to help ensure that Haiti has access to important natural disaster protection against tropical storms, hurricanes and earthquakes through the CCRIF facilities parametric disaster insurance products, for the period of June 1st 2014 to May 31st 2015. The grant was agreed at a CDB board meeting on 16th October.

“On behalf of the Haitian government and Haitian people I thank CDB for agreeing to make this payment to the CCRIF. This will ensure that the government is covered in the event the country is hit by a natural disaster during the coverage period,” commented Mr. Hancy Pierre-Louis, Haiti’s Director for CDB.

Because there had not been a payout to Haiti during the 2012 to 2013 period under its CCRIF policies the country benefited from a rebate on its previous policies, amounting to $1.285m.

Rather then opt to put this towards its hurricane and earthquake cover, the Haitian government has elected to purchase a CCRIF excess rainfall policy as well. This will provide Haiti with protection against storms which cause torrential rainfall but where the wind speeds and resulting damage are not sufficient to trigger the parametric tropical cyclone policy under CCRIF.

The CCRIF is getting traction with the excess rainfall policy and increasingly helping these Caribbean governments to become better protected against the range of threats they face from natural disasters and weather extremes.

As we wrote last week, the Caribbean CCRIF wind policies (and the CCRIF’s own cat bond) were not triggered by tropical storm and hurricane Gonzalo. However the excess rainfall policies remain under scrutiny to find out whether they could have been triggered.