SECRETARY-GENERAL of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, has called for the cost of insurance to be more affordable.

At the time, Ambassador LaRocque was speaking on a panel at the Insurance Colloquium: ‘Insurance in the age of climate change,’ organised by the Inter-American development Bank (IDB), the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Government of Barbados. The event was held on Tuesday at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in Barbados.
Justifying his call, the Secretary-General explained that governments in the Region lack the fiscal space to afford the insurance required to provide adequate financial resilience. This, he further explained, is due to the increase in intensity and frequency of natural disasters linked to climate change.

Ambassador LaRocque pointed out that in the Caribbean Region, there was a 66 per cent protection gap between the economic costs of damages and insured losses as against 55 per cent in developed countries.

He stated that it was the most vulnerable in the society who were most affected and who had the least capacity to afford the insurance which increased the responsibility of governments to provide the necessary relief. “This at a time when insurance premiums keep rising,” he added.

Speaking on the challenge of Climate Change, the Secretary-General said the real need for the region was to address its vulnerability prior to a disaster. He pointed out that each dollar spent on resilience saves between four and seven dollars of reconstruction and rebuilding costs after a disaster. He reiterated his call for using vulnerability as the criterion in determining concessional development financing instead of GDP per capita.