Renewal of innovative climate and disaster risk insurance by PCRIC and WTW to help close the protection gap in the Pacific

The Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Company (PCRIC), in collaboration with WTW (NASDAQ: WTW), a leading global advisory, broking, and solutions company, has today announced the renewal of its portfolio of policies for governments and government-affiliated entities in Pacific Island countries and territories, and associated reinsurance placement.

PCRIC developed the new policy designs with support from WTW’s Disaster Risk Finance (DRF) and Alternative Risk Transfer (ART) teams, with the successful renewal of its reinsurance portfolio designed to enhance access to new and improved disaster risk insurance cover for the Pacific region.

For 2024 and 2025, PCRIC now provides insurance for tropical cyclones, heavy rain, earthquake, and tsunami risk to six Pacific governments: the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu, as well as the state-owned telecommunications company PNG DataCo in Papua New Guinea and the Vatuvara Foundation in Fiji.

With climate change intensifying natural hazard events in the region, PCRIC’s insurance tools will provide critical protection for people, governments, economic assets and essential infrastructure services, as well as coral reefs for the year ahead.

Aholotu Palu, PCRIC CEO, said: “The successful renewal confirms PCRIC’s strategy to offer tailor-made and understandable financial protection products to Pacific Island Countries. PCRIC addresses an important market gap in the Pacific region and offers governments, including state-owned enterprises which provide essential services, access to insurance solutions that would otherwise not be available.”

Simon Young, Senior Director, Disaster Risk Finance at WTW, said: “The new approach underpinning PCRIC’s products is now more people-centred and tailored to on-the-ground conditions. The simplified parametric structures also bring greater transparency to the analytics and improved confidence in the modelling and perceived climate change impacts. These significant improvements have contributed to cheaper reinsurance from more markets, allowing governments to more cost-effectively manage disaster risk with the support of PCRIC.”