Saint Lucia: Disaster Risk Financing Technical Assistance

Report on Risk Finance in Saint Lucia. Photo credit: World Bank

Context and objectives 
The main objective was to support the Government of Saint Lucia to:

• Better understanding and managing potential fiscal impacts derived from disasters;
• Building institutional capacity, and;
• Identifying cost-effective financial protection options against disasters, based on a concrete understanding of the fiscal exposure to disasters and of the disaster risk financing tools currently in use in, or available to, Saint Lucia

Main activities and results

• Understanding and quantifying fiscal risk from disasters;
• Analyzing and reviewing existing market conditions for the provision of catastrophe risk insurance;
• Analyzing and building a cost-effective sovereign financial protection strategy against disasters;
• Integrating disaster risk into a comprehensive risk management strategy;
• South-south knowledge exchange: Collaborate and share lessons learnt under the ACP-EU Program with other Small Island Developing States.

The following results were achieved:

• A Country Disaster Risk Profile was delivered. Based on baseline data on historical losses and disaster-related government expenditures, and a country profile for earthquake and windstorm risks at the national level, the document helped the Government of Saint Lucia to better understand and quantify the asset value of Saint Lucia’s building stock and of potential future disaster losses to Saint Lucia. 
• A final report on recommendations for a disaster risk finance strategy was published, accompanied by a short video on these recommendations. The report was based in part on a report on the domestic insurance market, and by discussions with local insurance companies. The recommendations for the strategy were reviewed by the Ministry of Finance and the Technical Working Group. The Ministry of Finance recognized the importance of mainstreaming disaster risk finance into budget, fiscal policy and debt management considerations.
• In October 2017, a day with in-depth training for technical experts, as well as with strategic discussions on disaster risk finance strategy implementation for policy makers, was organized with regional stakeholders.

Partnerships and Coordination

The World Bank team got regular feedback about the deliverables from the Technical Working Group which was set up as part of the engagements with the Ministry of Finance in Lucia. The Technical Working Group was comprised of different stakeholders of the Ministry of Finance, the budget director’s office, insurance council and financial services regulator. 

Useful Links

In the frame of this project a video was produced describing how the ACP-EU NDRR Program has supported the Governments of Belize, Grenada, Jamaica and Saint Lucia to better understand and manage the fiscal impacts of disasters and to identify cost-effective financial protection options. The video is available here.