Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Segregated Portfolio Company


Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility Segregated Portfolio Company is an insurance company headquartered in the Cayman Islands. The sixteen original member-countries of CCRIF included participants in CARICOM, and the membership of the Board of Directors is selected by CARICOM and by the Caribbean Development Bank.
Founded in 2007, CCRIF is the first multi-country risk pool in the world, and was the first insurance instrument to successfully develop parametric policies backed by both traditional and capital markets. These parametric policies release funds based upon factors of a calamity such as rainfall or wind speed, which can speed up the payout of policies rather than after damages are assessed. Unused funds are kept as reserves for the CCRIF. The fund can also draw upon $140 million in funds underwritten by reinsurance.
Other regions have since setup similar government disaster instance including in the African Union and the Pacific Islands Forum.

History

In 2008, CCRIF made its first payout to the government of the Turks and Caicos Islands in response to damage from Hurricane Ike.
During its formative years, day-to-day operations were handled by Caribbean Risk Managers Limited, who acted as the facility supervisor. In 2013, Isaac Anthony, previously a member of the Board of Directors of CCRIF and the Permanent Secretary for Planning and National Development in the Government of St Lucia, was appointed the first Chief Executive Officer.
In 2014, CCRIF reorganized into a segregated portfolio company, and expanded its product line to include parametric insurance for excess rainfall as well as to offer its portfolio of insurance products to countries in Central America, including members of the Council of Ministers of Finance of Central America, Panama and the Dominican Republic. CCRIF also was the first company to participate in the World Bank Capital-at-Risk Notes Program to diversify its sources of risk capital.
At the G7 leaders summit in 2015, CCRIF SPC was highlighted as an example to be used, "... to increase by up to 400 million the number of people in the most vulnerable developing countries who have access to direct or indirect insurance coverage against the negative impact of climate change related hazards by 2020..." At the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, mentioned CCRIF SPC as an example as he launched an initiative on climate resilience that included increased access to insurance, and President Obama announced a commitment of $30 million by the United States government to provide additional insurance through platforms, including CCRIF, in his remarks to the Alliance of Small Island States at the Paris Conference.
In 2016, the World Bank announced a partnership with CCRIF SPC to create a new insurance product to protect food security and promote the resilience of the small-scale fisheries sector in the Caribbean. Also, the World Bank announced the Pandemic Emergency Facility built using CCRIF SPC as a model.