GEORGETOWN, Cayman Islands (CMC) – The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) on Tuesday said it had entered into a partnership with CelsiusPro and its subsidiary, Global Parametrics, to launch two initiatives allowing for the efficient administration of microinsurance products.

It said that the CCRIF Microinsurance Facility, as well as the digital insurance administrative platform solution, the White Label Platform (WLP), will enable multiple insurance companies to partner with CCRIF to roll out and market microinsurance products to new and existing customers.

This initiative is being supported with a grant from the Natural Disaster Fund (NDF), which is a blended risk transfer vehicle designed to mitigate the challenges in climate and natural catastrophes (NatCat) resilience for low-and middle-income countries.

CCRIF’s chief executive officer, Isaac Anthony, said this new partnership is a game-changer, with the overarching objective of reducing vulnerability, leaving ‘no one behind’ and further closing the protection gap.

“The CCRIF Microinsurance Facility will bring microinsurance or inclusive insurance into the hands of millions of persons across the Caribbean, and later on to Central America, thereby protecting lives and livelihoods in the face of the increasing frequency, intensity and unpredictability of hydrometeorological events associated with climate change that are bringing many hardships to low-income groups,” said Anthony.

He said that the CCRIF provides coverage to 30 members in the Caribbean and Central America and, since its inception in 2007, has made 78 payouts totalling US$390 million.

He said the segregated portfolio company, owned, operated, and registered in the Caribbean, has seven parametric insurance products for tropical cyclones, excess rainfall, fluvial flooding, earthquakes, and for the electric, water and fisheries sectors.

The chief executive officer of CelsiusPro, Mark Rueegg, said, “We are grateful for the support of the Natural Disaster Fund (NDF) to equip CCRIF and their partners with CelsiusPro’s advanced parametric insurance technology.

“Our White Label Platform will help build an insurance ecosystem that reaches vulnerable communities across all CCRIF member countries,” he added.

The NDF is funded by the United Kingdom government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Germany’s development bank KfW on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The first product to be offered by the CCRIF Microinsurance Facility through the CelsiusPro White Label Platform would be the Livelihood Protection Policy (LPP), which is a parametric weather index-based insurance product that offers insurance coverage for wind that is associated with tropical storms and hurricanes and rainfall that occurs any time during the year.

The LPP will initially be offered in five countries, namely Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

“It is designed to protect the livelihoods of vulnerable, low-income individuals by providing quick cash payouts following extreme weather events. Payouts are tied to a series of thresholds for wind speed and rainfall and can therefore be made very quickly, within 14 days as is customary for CCRIF’s other parametric insurance policies, as there is no need to undertake on-the-ground damage or impact assessments.”

The CCRIF said that the LPP targets small farmers, fishers, market vendors, food vendors, day labourers, construction workers, tourism workers and persons who own micro and small businesses.

Payouts under the LPP will help individials to get their “livelihood” back on track without them having to wait for help from “external” sources such as the Government, friends, family, or from remittances…,” it added.

The LPP is expected to bring immeasurable benefits to the Caribbean. Not only will it play a key role in closing the protection gap, but for low-income groups, it would also provide some level of financial stability through the injection of quick liquidity or cash payouts, allowing them to avoid adopting coping strategies that could lead them into poverty, the CCRIF added.