From vaults to villages: How banks build financial resilience in crisis response

What comes to mind when you picture a bank supporting a flood response? Access to cash? Ensuring liquidity? What about the vulnerability of the banking infrastructure itself? When disasters strike, banks and financial service structures in affected areas face significant challenges, yet they prove surprisingly resilient weathering the storm of disruption.

Banks occupy a paradoxical position in disasters: vulnerable to disruption while uniquely positioned to determine how quickly communities bounce back. Through branch networks, mobile platforms, and trusted community presence, they provide what humanitarian actors can't deliver alone—immediate access to money when people need it most. A study by the Centre for Economic Policy and Research found that banks with deep local roots tend to stick around after disasters, while banks from other regions are more likely to pull out. This makes sense: local banks have stronger ties to the community and are more invested in the area's recovery.

The damage to their operations is real but temporary—in fact after catastrophic events like hurricanes, banks can provide an important lifeline to the population to get back to normal business relatively quickly. Following Hurricane Melissa, for example, the Government of Jamaica will receive a full payout of USD150 million under its catastrophe insurance coverage with the World Bank, backed by a catastrophe bond issued in 2024 by the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or IBRD). These instruments are parametric, meaning they pay when independent data (like a hurricane’s pressure, path, wind, storm surge, or rainfall) crosses set thresholds, giving the government cash within days instead of waiting for loss assessments.

Today, Thursday 4 December 2025, the world observes the International Day of Banks, recognizing the role of banks in financing sustainable development and improving living standards. But as the examples that follow demonstrate, banks' contributions extend far beyond traditional development finance.

At the OCHA-UNDP Connecting Business Initiative (CBI), we work with business networks before, during, and after crises. Many CBI Member Networks have found partners in banks and formed myriad, proven initiatives that help them activate aid quickly in emergencies. These fall into five categories, each leveraging different capabilities banks already possess:

• emergency cash transfers
• pre-positioned funding mechanisms
• disaster risk reduction infrastructure
• financial literary and capacity building, and
• long-term recovery and reconstruction.

How emergency cash transfer platforms saves lives

Perhaps the most visible banking contribution during disasters is the ability to move money rapidly to affected populations. Mobile banking and digital payment platforms can disburse digital money and cash within hours rather than days, reducing logistical bottlenecks while increasing transparency and financial inclusion. When pre-positioned agreements exist, these platforms become lifelines.

When Cyclones Batsirai and Emnati devastated Madagascar in March 2022, Mvola mobile banking—Madagascar's first mobile money service and a member of the CBI Member Network Madagascar Private Sector Humanitarian Platform (PSHP Madagascar)—immediately waived transfer fees. This allowed the World Food Programme and other partners to rapidly disburse cash assistance to displaced families without bank branch access, check processing, or security risks of physical cash.

In Peru, the CBI Member Network Hombro a Hombro (HAH) has developed a sophisticated coordinated approach to emergency response through the Peruvian Banking Association (ASBANC). When disasters strike, ASBANC ensures affected populations can access cash quickly through multiple channels—ATMs, bank branches, and prepaid cards—maintaining financial service continuity even when physical infrastructure is compromised.

But ASBANC's role extends beyond simply keeping banking systems operational. In case of a disaster, ASBANC coordinates with all member banks to open dedicated accounts specifically for receiving donations from abroad. This means that international solidarity—whether from international organizations, or foreign governments—flows through a unified banking infrastructure straight to government emergency response programmes.

ASBANC also actively participates in large-scale disaster simulations organized by INDECI, the National Institute of Civil Defense, practicing procedures that ensure business continuity plans work and coordinating private sector and government actions for more effective emergency response.

Pre-positioned funding mechanisms: Money ready before the storm hits

What if you didn't have to fundraise during the crisis? What if the money was already there, waiting? That's pre-positioned funding.

Beyond facilitating cash transfers, some banking partnerships create dedicated funding mechanisms that can be activated before or during disasters. These pre-positioned funds enable a faster, more strategic response.

When Super Typhoon Uwan barreled toward the Philippines in November 2025, the FinTech Alliance Philippines, a member of the Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) did not wait for its landfall. Within hours, they launched the #ReadyPH National Fund Drive, jumpstarting it with USD 1700 and mobilizing digital payment platforms. The Alliance represents over 140 members, driving 95% of the country's digital financial transactions, scaling the impact of mobilization.

"Readiness saves more lives than relief ever can," explained Lito Villanueva, the Alliance's Founding Chairman. The example illustrates how financial infrastructure that’s activated before disaster strikes can be critical in delivering a fast response.

Disaster risk reduction infrastructure: Building what prevents the next crisis

Some partnerships don't just react—they invest in infrastructure that prevents the next crisis from becoming a disaster. These investments in water systems, health facilities, and resilient schools address the underlying deficits that amplify disaster impacts and slow recovery when they hit.

In Mexico, the Centro Nacional de Apoyo para Contingencias Epidemiológicas y Desastres (CENACED), a CBI Member Network, has built a resilient schools partnership with HSBC, Banamex, and Santander, demonstrating how banks can fund long-term resilience investments that protect Mexico's most vulnerable communities and ensure children's futures aren't derailed by disasters.

HSBC has committed $100,000 to support the reconstruction of schools in Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities impacted by Hurricanes Otis, John, and Erick. Despite the substantial investment, it's the approach that makes it transformative. Instead of reconstructing what was there before, the schools are made fit for purpose and to withstand the next hurricane.

That way, CENACED and its banking partners are addressing both disaster risk and social equity simultaneously. The goal is to ensure education continuity and prevent school dropout among children in highly vulnerable communities. Education is itself a form of disaster resilience.

In Madagascar, the PSHP exemplifies this approach in the health sector. One of their members, BNI Madagascar, launched the SALAMA BNI programme through the AXIAN Foundation and in coordination with the Ministry of Health. Since 2019, the programme has built 20 health centers that have reached nearly 300,000 people—80% of them women. In 2024 alone, nine new centers were built, improving maternal and child health access. When cyclones strike, these facilities provide critical surge capacity that saves lives—capacity that exists because a bank invested in long-term resilience rather than short-term visibility.

Financial literacy and capacity building: Teaching money skills that save lives

Financial literacy is also disaster preparedness: knowing how to manage money during crisis, understanding risk, and planning for the worst while hoping for the best.

The Asia Pacific Alliance for Disaster Management Sri Lanka (A-PAD SL) understood this concept and since 2016, their partnership with HSBC works with managers to teach financial literacy to Sri Lankan youth. It's a two-way street: the bank staff learn about local vulnerabilities, and the youth learn skills that could save their families during the next crisis.

In Mexico, Banamex takes this approach to the sector level. They lead the Resilient Finance Community of Practice within CENACED, where 24 institutions collaborate to promote and facilitate the integration of disaster risk into the investment decisions of the private and financial sectors. Banamex has donated $2,000 to support this work. Instead of transforming one individual bank’s behavior, the sector-wide capacity building ensures that disaster risk becomes part of how the entire financial sector makes investment and lending decisions.

This creates a space for financial institutions to learn, share experiences, and develop tools for integrating disaster risk into their core business operations.

Long-term recovery and reconstruction

Response saves lives, but recovery determines whether communities truly bounce back.

When floods hit Sri Lanka in 2017, followed by the Easter bombing in 2019, HSBC and A-PAD SL made a different commitment: three to four-year recovery projects. The goal? No child would miss a school day because of disaster.

This meant medical facilities, educational support, trauma counseling, and—through A-PAD's government coordination—allowing hospitalized children to take examinations from hospital beds with assigned invigilators. Tutors went to homes and hospitals, ensuring disasters didn't derail educational trajectories.

In Madagascar, BRED Bank's water infrastructure projects with Medair represent recovery investments addressing root vulnerabilities. Their construction of wells and fountains in southern Madagascar tackles Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) deficits that make communities fragile before disasters and slow to recover afterward, with a three-party contract ensuring alignment with government priorities.

In Türkiye, the Turkish Business Confederation (TÜRKONFED), a CBI Member Network, partnered with UN Women and Türkiye İş Bankası to develop a Global Gender-Responsive Procurement Handbook. Launched in July 2025, this bilingual guide expands women entrepreneurs' access to supply chains and procurement processes. By supporting the participation of women-led businesses in corporate supply chains, the partnership strengthens economic fabric that must flex—not break—when disasters hit.

The coordination that makes it all possible

These partnerships do not emerge from thin air. CBI Member Networks are the invisible infrastructure making these partnerships work. When PSHP Madagascar convenes BNI, BRED, Mvola, and other institutions alongside humanitarian actors and government agencies, they create shared understanding, shared protocols, and shared capabilities. But most importantly, they build trust.

When CENACED brings multiple banks together around resilient schools, efforts complement rather than duplicate. Different country but same effect: when HAH in Peru brought six banks onto their Board of Trustees, banks went from donors to governors. When A-PAD Sri Lanka facilitates HSBC's engagement, they translate between corporate structures and humanitarian imperatives. This coordination web transforms banks from donors writing checks to strategic partners integrated throughout the disaster management cycle, leveraging unique capabilities—payment infrastructure, digital platforms, branch networks, customer relationships, employee expertise—in ways that multiply humanitarian impact.

As climate change drives more frequent disasters while humanitarian funding plateaus, these partnerships point toward necessary evolution. Banks can provide the infrastructure that makes response faster, more efficient, and more locally rooted. From mobile money waiving fees to foundations building health centers, FinTech alliances mobilizing payments, or retail banks teaching financial literacy, banks have a lot to offer in emergencies.

When the next disaster strikes, the difference between knowledge gaps and effective coordination and effective response may run through a bank branch, mobile wallet, or digital payment platform—if we've built the partnerships beforehand.

Happy International Day of Banks and congratulations to all the CBI Member Networks and their partners!