Jamaica parametric rain cover triggered by Beryl, CCRIF payout of US $10.3m due

Jamaica’s recovery from the impacts of major hurricane Beryl is set to benefit from an additional roughly US $10.3 million payout by the CCRIF SPC, after the storm triggered its excess rainfall policy under the parametric risk transfer facility.

Jamaica is benefiting from its multi-layered approach to disaster risk financing, risk transfer and insurance, with a number of layers of the arrangements triggered after hurricane Beryl’s eye passed close to the island recently.

Already, Jamaica had announced that it expects its parametric tropical cyclone policy provided by the CCRIF SPC (formerly known as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) to payout, with an estimated US $16.3 million due.

Now, the country’s Minister of Finance Dr. Nigel Clarke has also explained that Jamaica is set to receive a further US $10.3 million from the CCRIF SPC, this time for the triggering of its parametric excess rainfall policy by rains associated with hurricane Beryl.

Clarke explained, “I have now received the Final Modelled Loss and Policy Payment Report from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (“CCRIF”) in respect of the GOJ’s Excess Rainfall Policy which communicates the following:

“The GOJ’s Excess Rainfall Policy with the CCRIF has been triggered with a payment amount of approx US $10.3 million or approx J $1.6 billion.”

Clarke went on to highlight that this parametric rainfall insurance payout triggered by hurricane Beryl is additional to the one set to be received under the parametric CCRIF tropical cyclone policy.

Clarke further noted that the CCRIF coverage sits in the fourth layer of the Government of Jamaica’s multi-layered disaster risk financing framework, which you can see details of in this previous article.

Readers will be aware that Jamaica’s $150 million IBRD catastrophe bond was not triggered by the passage of Beryl close to the island.

As we had also reported last week, Grenada is set to receive a payout of approximately US $44 million from the CCRIF SPC after hurricane Beryl triggered its parametric tropical cyclone, fisheries, and excess rainfall insurance policies.

Also read: Not every risk transfer instrument designed to trigger for every storm: Jamaica MoF.