NCB Financial Group (NCBFG) said on Friday that lessons from Hurricane Melissa are reshaping how the company prepares for disasters, with a stronger focus on customer continuity, operational resilience, and faster claims response ahead of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season.

Speaking at the group’s quarterly investor briefing, company officials said the storm exposed operational challenges ranging from claims-processing capacity to maintaining customer access, to cash and financial services in affected areas.

Hurricane Melissa generated roughly US$129 million in gross insurance claims across the group during the six months ended March 2026. However, the company said reinsurance protection absorbed much of the financial impact, limiting the damage to the group’s balance sheet.

Guardian Group President Ian Chinapoo said Hurricane Melissa exposed operational bottlenecks in the insurance sector’s ability to process large volumes of claims after major disasters.

“One of the key lessons that we learned from an event of this magnitude is that operationally, in processing claims, we do have an issue with the availability and quantity of loss adjusters in the market,” Chinapoo said during Friday’s online briefing.

He said Guardian is now seeking to deepen its pool of loss adjusters ahead of the next hurricane season, in order to speed up claims settlements following major storms. Chinapoo also said the storm exposed continuing underinsurance problems across parts of the Caribbean as rising construction costs widen the gap between insured values and actual replacement costs.

Beyond insurance claims, the company said maintaining operational continuity during disasters has become an increasingly important focus across the group.

Sheree Martin, head of the group’s Jamaican banking operations, said the company’s response initially centred on customer relief programmes and ensuring affected clients could continue accessing financial services after the storm.

Martin said the experience also influenced how the bank approaches delinquency management and relief programmes for customers facing disruptions to income and loan repayments after disasters.

“We actually provided mobile solutions where we could take cash to people at a time when they needed to access supplies for repairs,” Martin said.

NCBFG also introduced temporary support measures for some affected borrowers following the hurricane. The company said that challenge extends beyond insurance operations into the wider banking system itself, with financial institutions increasingly being required to maintain uninterrupted services during severe weather events.

Clarien CEO Ian Truran said Bermuda had experienced increasingly frequent near-miss hurricane events in recent years, forcing financial institutions to strengthen operational resilience and continuity planning.

“We don’t prepare for downtime. We actually prepare to be up 100 per cent of the time,” Truran said during the briefing.

He said the company has continued investing in cloud-based systems, operational redundancies, and regional support infrastructure designed to keep core financial services functioning during emergencies.

Caribbean financial institutions have faced increasing pressure in recent years to strengthen disaster-response systems as severe weather events become more frequent and costly across the region.

NCBFG operates banking, insurance, wealth management and investment businesses across several Caribbean territories, including Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Group CEO Robert Almeida said the group believes it is entering the next hurricane season better prepared operationally than it was a year ago, despite the disruption caused by Hurricane Melissa.

“Obviously [what will happen in] the next hurricane season is something that we can’t predict, but we are more prepared for [it] than we were a year ago. We were well prepared a year ago — as you can see in the results — and we’ll be more prepared for the next one,” Almeida said during the briefing.

CHINAPOO…One of the key lessons that we learned from an event of this magnitude is that operationally, in processing claims, we do have an issue with the availability and quantity of loss adjusters in the market.

MARTIN…We actually provided mobile solutions where we could take cash to people at a time when they needed to access supplies for repairs.