Protecting paradise: Opportunities for insurance to support marine-based and coastal tourism in the Caribbean

This report explores the case for introducing innovative insurance products for businesses within the tourism industry that leverage and conserve coastal and marine ecosystems. It presents an overview of the insurance market in the Caribbean, an analysis of the potential of insurance products to protect natural assets, and a consideration of international examples to be applied in the region. Insurance has great potential to mitigate disaster risk, but realizing this potential will require investing in education to expand insurance uptake, drawing lessons from prior experiences, minimizing financial burdens, exploring new products and types of insurance, ensuring that solutions are scalable, and improving quantitative tools and data.

This report finds that insurance can be designed to incentivize nature-based adaptation and help repair natural assets, presenting an opportunity for the Caribbean tourism industry to adopt insurance as a key strategy to reduce disaster risk and meet post disaster funding needs. While insurance markets in the region are slowly growing, innovation will be an important strategy to safeguard the future of Caribbean small island developing states amid the increasing intensity of the hurricane season.