The Mesoamerican Reef (MAR) Fund Insurance Programme, developed by MAR Fund and WTW uses parametric insurance to rapidly fund coral reef restoration following hurricane damage across the 1,000 km Mesoamerican Reef spanning Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. The programme currently covers 11 protected reef sites, which collectively support over 2 million people through coastal protection, fisheries, and tourism. The parametric trigger is based on hurricane wind intensity at each site, where when wind speeds exceed predefined thresholds, stepped payouts are automatically released without the need for loss assessment, with amounts tailored to each site’s response capacity and costs.
Payouts flow through MAR Fund’s Emergency Fund to pre-trained local response brigades who carry out immediate reef rescue activities. Key partners include WTW (product design and broking), AXA Climate (insurer), the InsuResilience Solutions Fund (premium financing, funded by KfW on behalf of the German government), ORRAA, and AFCIA/UNDP. The programme is nature-positive by design: it pre-arranges financing specifically for ecosystem restoration, addresses the failure of traditional philanthropic funding to mobilise quickly enough after disasters, builds lasting local conservation capacity through its network of reef guardians, and is now being scaled across the wider Caribbean.