No caribbean insurance payouts from hurricane irene

Hurricane Irene will not trigger insurance payouts to the Caribbean islands impacted by the storm, which roared through the Bahamas as a major category 3 hurricane on Thursday.

The Caribbean's sovereign risk pooling facility, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), said on Friday its preliminary model calculations suggest that no payouts will be due.

"We see government losses in six of our member countries but all are below the trigger level," Simon Young, chief executive of Caribbean Risk Managers, the facility supervisor of CCRIF, told Reuters.

"The Bahamas endured the largest modelled loss but the absence of major impacts in Nassau and Freeport, where most exposure is, meant that the loss was below the trigger level."

Irene battered the low-lying Bahamas southeast of Florida and is expected to sweep northward to hit the North Carolina Coast on Saturday, before raking the remaining Atlantic seaboard.

Source: Reuters