Thursday, March 28, 2024

Haiti to get in excess of US$20M following passage of Hurricane Matthew

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GRAND CAYMAN CCRIF SPC, formerly the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, is preparing to make a pay out to the Government of Haiti as a result of the passage of Hurricane Matthew.

The hurricane triggered a payment on the country’s Tropical Cyclone policy and based on preliminary calculations, Haiti will receive a little over US$20 million – the largest payment ever made by CCRIF.

This was revealed Friday by CCRIF Chairman Milo Pearson at the IMF/World Bank Group Annual Meetings.

He also thanked the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) for paying Haiti’s insurance premiums over the last four years in support of the country’s overall disaster risk management strategy, recognising the key role of risk transfer instruments.

Prior to that, in 2010 and 2011, both CDB and the Government of Canada paid Haiti’s annual premium.

Since its inception in 2007, CCRIF has made a total of 15 pay outs to ten member governments totalling US$38.8 million, all within 14 days of the event. This payment will represent the 16th pay out, which would make total pay outs approximately US$58.8 million.

It will be Haiti’s second payment from CCRIF. In 2010, following the devastating earthquake, CCRIF made a payment of US$7.7 million to the Government of Haiti, based on the terms of its Earthquake Policy.

 That payment represented the first inflow of direct financial assistance received by Haiti at that time. The Haitian government used the CCRIF funds to cover salaries of key emergency personnel, thereby “keeping the wheels of government turning”.

CCRIF’s parametric insurance products are contracts that make payments based on the intensity of an event (for example, hurricane wind speed, earthquake intensity or volume of rainfall) and the amount of loss calculated in a pre-agreed model caused by these events.

 Parametric insurance enables pay outs to be made very quickly after a hazard event. This is different from traditional insurance settlements that require an on-the-ground assessment of individual losses after an event before a payment can be made.

Hurricane Matthew made landfall in Haiti on October 4 as a powerful Category 4 Hurricane. A United Nations representative to Haiti, Mourad Wahba, said the country was facing its largest humanitarian crisis since the earthquake in 2010 left more than 200 000 dead and tens of thousands living in tents and makeshift dwellings. (PR)

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