CCRIF confirms parametric insurance payouts for hurricane Elsa

The CCRIF SPC (formerly known as the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility), has confirmed that it made a number of payouts after the passage of hurricane Elsa, as member parametric insurance policies and deductible covers were triggered, its first payouts of the 2021 hurricane season.

We explained back in early July that St. Lucia was expected to benefit from a payout under its CCRIF policies Aggregate Deductible Cover (ADC) feature.

CCRIF confirmed that today, along with a range of other payouts and one where the tropical cyclone policy itself was triggered due to the intensity of hurricane Elsa’s winds.

The Government of Barbados has received two payouts from thee CCRIF, one under its parametric tropical cyclone insurance and one under its parametric excess rainfall insurance, with these totalling US $2.5 million.

As well as this, CCRIF confirmed that US $528,512 has been paid out to three other member governments, Haiti, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, all under the Aggregate Deductible Cover (ADC) feature of their CCRIF parametric tropical cyclone policies.

Since its inception, CCRIF has now made 52 payouts totalling US $202.5 million to 16 of its 23 members.

The Government of Haiti has received 4 payouts totalling US $38.3 million and the Government of Barbados has received 7 payouts totalling US $21.8 million, between them accounting for roughly 30% of CCRIF’s total parametric insurance payouts.

As ever, the parametric nature of the insurance policies has enabled CCRIF to make its payouts within 14 days of the event, a deadline it always aspires to meet.

The aggregate deductible coverage (ADC) feature was introduced by the CCRIF as a new component of its parametric coverage back in 2017, helping its members with their disaster recovery financing, even if modelled losses from a qualifying natural disaster event fall below the parametric attachment point of the policy, but when there are observable losses on the ground.

The facility said, “CCRIF continues to demonstrate that catastrophe risk insurance can effectively provide a level of financial protection for countries vulnerable to natural disasters and is key to closing the insurance penetration gap.”