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Cayman Islands, 7 July 2025. On the margins of London Climate Action Week in June 2025, CCRIF in partnership with CelsiusPro and its subsidiary, Global Parametrics, launched the CCRIF Microinsurance Facility as well as the underlying digital insurance administrative platform solution, the White Label Platform. This platform will allow for the efficient administration of microinsurance products (from product pricing to risk capacity management, policy management and settlement of claims) and enable multiple insurance companies to partner with CCRIF to roll out and market microinsurance products to new and existing customers. CCRIF CEO, Mr. Isaac Anthony, described this new partnership as a game changer, with the overarching objective of reducing vulnerability, leaving ‘no one behind’ and further closing the protection gap.
In applauding the partnership, Mr. Anthony stated that, “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.”
Mr. Mark Rueegg, CEO of CelsiusPro, stated that, "We are grateful for the support of the Natural Disaster Fund 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."
Mr. Anthony stressed that CCRIF is well positioned to provide a platform to scale up microinsurance offerings in the countries that it has provided parametric insurance coverage to for the last 18 years. CCRIF operates as the Caribbean and Central America Parametric Insurance Facility and Development Insurer. CCRIF is a leader in bringing to market parametric insurance products for governments and key economic sectors. Today, 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. Today CCRIF has 7 parametric insurance products for tropical cyclones, excess rainfall, fluvial flooding, earthquakes, and for the electric, water and fisheries sectors.
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. The NDF is funded by the UK 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. 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 LPP targets small farmers, fishers, market vendors, food vendors, day labourers, construction workers, tourism workers and persons who own micro and small businesses, etc.
Payouts under the LPP will help persons 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 etc. For example, if a farmer purchases the LPP, he or she will have a source of immediate funding to undertake activities such as draining fields, replanting, and reconstructing irrigation systems if the insurance policy triggers.
Historically, CCRIF’s expansion into microinsurance was based on a version of the LPP, developed and tested as part of the Climate Risk Adaptation and Insurance in the Caribbean (CRAIC) project in collaboration with the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII). MCII and CCRIF have been partners since 2011 studying the microinsurance landscape through research on the market and on vulnerable groups, learning lessons from the first introduction of the LPP in 2014 in 2 countries in the Caribbean and working to build capacity of key stakeholders, including insurance companies and regulators, to better understand climate risk insurance and microinsurance and how microinsurance could be applied within the context of social protection policies. Over the years, CCRIF has introduced ideas around scaling up microinsurance that have found favour with governments and have expanded the number of groups (e.g. seasonal tourism workers and others in the tourism value chain such as taxi drivers, small-scale entertainers, etc.) that could benefit from the LPP.
This current version of the LPP is underpinned by CCRIF’s state-of-the-art parametric insurance models, which are specifically customized for the Caribbean and Central America. CCRIF continues to push the innovation needle, by using its base models for tropical cyclones and excess rainfall to create products for sectors that either have no insurance or limited access to insurance or for underserved groups that need insurance. The LPP is an example of this innovation.
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, would 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 LPP will also help to improve the credit worthiness of individuals in the long term, giving them access to financial services that they previously may not have had access to. The LPP will also play a key role in supporting governments’ policy goals related to financial inclusion – enabling underserved persons to participate in the financial system and over time benefit from the various services that the financial sector provides.
The LPP will initially be offered in 5 countries – Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad & Tobago.
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