by Linda Straker
- Multiple damage events caused by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 laid foundation for CCRIF
- CCRIF designed to assist in recovery or immediate phase following disaster
- Grenada received EC$118 million CCRIF payout following passage of Hurricane Beryl on 1 July 2024
In December 2024, Government will provide a report to the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) about how it spent the US$44 million or EC$118 million payout the country received following the passage of Hurricane Beryl on 1 July 2024.
“One of the things that we have agreed and it’s all part of the participation agreement that the country signed with CCRIF is that they are supposed to provide a report 6 months after the event, detailing how the payout was actually used,” said Isaac Anthony, CCRIF’s CEO during a recent media engagement.
“We do not prescribe to the government how the funds should be used; the government basically has the flexibility to determine how best to deploy the resources cause the reality is that they are on the ground, they know the situation, they know who is most impacted and how best resources should be deployed,” he said in response to a question in which he was asked about the use of CCRIF payouts to governments.
He explained that the CCRIF is designed to assist in the recovery or immediate phase following a disaster. “The reality is that the payout that CCRIF make is relativity small compared to the overwhelming cost of rebuilding. We pay out in 14 days and this gives governments the ability to address the immediate needs like food and shelter,” he told the moderator of the discussion which was held as part of the launch of the Ivan+ 20 project.
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan devastated Grenada and it was that hurricane and the multiple damage events caused which laid the foundation for the CCRIF. Grenada is described as the poster child of the CCRIF’s parametric insurance policies which make payments based on the intensity of an event and the amount of loss calculated in a pre-agreed model caused by these events. The payout to Grenada on its tropical cyclone policy is the single largest payout by CCRIF.
CCRIF currently offers 6 parametric insurance products: for tropical cyclones, excess rainfall, earthquakes, and the fisheries, electric utilities and water utilities sectors.
