What’s the risk faced by water companies in the Caribbean?

The story of the Caribbean region’s vulnerability to hydrometeorological hazards – such as hurricanes, tropical storms and excess rainfall is well known, and the impacts of these events are being exacerbated by climate change which is increasing their frequency and intensity. Following natural disasters, many water utilities, including their infrastructure and equipment, such as pumping stations and intake valves are significantly impacted and/or destroyed, often due to the high levels of turbidity and accompanying flooding. Water utilities across the region have limited financial resources and available budget and oftentimes are unable to recover in a timely manner to provide safe drinking water and sanitation services following natural disasters. The importance of potable water following a natural disaster cannot be emphasized enough and is key to avoiding the incidence of water-borne diseases which are often associated with these natural disaster events. 

What’s CWUIC SP Program about?

The Caribbean Water Utility Insurance Company (CWUIC) was established as a segregated portfolio (SP) company within CCRIF SPC (formerly the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) and is being designed to be a center of excellence for disaster risk management and financing with 3 components that will provide support to water utilities in emergency response planning and restoring and rebuilding post-disaster; parametric insurance to help utilities respond to and recover from natural disasters; and advisory services and technical assistance to identify and structure priority projects to build water and wastewater utilities’ resilience to natural disasters. 

The SP structure of CCRIF allows for total segregation of risk and risk management operations (pricing, policy formats etc.) among cells, providing benefits such as the sharing of operational functions and costs, thereby enabling CCRIF to be able to offer insurance products that costs much less than if each member were to approach the reinsurance market individually. 

Why is the CWUIC SP program relevant?

A dedicated insurance facility for the water and wastewater sector will bring immeasurable benefits and dedicated resources. Access to quick liquidity following a triggering event is key for water utilities as this will ensure that they will be able to bring back into production water supply in the shortest possible time. 

Approximately 35 water utilities in 29 territories in the Caribbean have been identified as potential clients for CWUIC SP. 

Key Partners:

• Interamerican Development Bank. 
• The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) 
• Caribbean Development Bank. 
• UK Government through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. 
• The Coca‑Cola Foundation.