New industry figures show insurers have closed most Hurricane Melissa claims, yet the money has flowed overwhelmingly to commercial property, underlining how thinly Jamaica’s homes were covered.
KINGSTON, Jamaica, 11 October 2026, Insurers have paid out J$54.35 billion on Hurricane Melissa property and motor claims, according to Insurance Association of Jamaica (IAJ) figures reported by the Jamaica Gleaner, but only about a fifth of the property money has gone to homeowners. Of the J$51.98 billion paid on property claims up to 30 September, commercial policyholders received J$41.61 billion and residential policyholders J$10.37 billion. Nearly a year after the storm, the numbers offer one of the clearest pictures yet of who was insured when Melissa struck, and who has been left to rebuild largely on their own.
Where the money went
The IAJ data cover 9,340 claims, of which 8,357, or 89.5 per cent, are counted as settled, leaving 983 outstanding. Commercial and residential property claims make up 740 of those still open. By line of business, 96.5 per cent of motor claims, 85.7 per cent of residential claims and 83.1 per cent of commercial claims are recorded as settled, while engineering claims lag at 55.2 per cent.
The geography is just as telling. St James alone accounts for J$30.55 billion, close to three fifths of all property payments, which is likely to reflect the concentration of insured hotels and commercial assets in and around Montego Bay. Hanover (J$3.52 billion), Westmoreland (J$2.94 billion) and St Ann (J$1.75 billion) follow, with a further J$9.33 billion paid on islandwide and multi-location policies. St Elizabeth, among the worst hit parishes, recorded relatively low payouts, which the IAJ attributed to limited insurance penetration there.
Settled is not the same as paid
The headline settlement rate needs careful reading. Under the industry’s definition, a claim counts as settled not only when a full and final payment is made, but also when it is closed because the insurer has no liability, the claim is withdrawn, or the loss falls below the deductible. That helps explain why the association’s own figures, reported earlier this month by the Gleaner and the Jamaica Observer, showed only 54 per cent of non-motor claims fully settled and paid at the end of September.
The distinction matters to homeowners, because several of the issues raised by policyholders since the storm sit in that gap: deductibles, property valuations, underinsurance and the average clause, which reduces a payout when a building is insured for less than its true value. The IAJ has acknowledged those concerns. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) is now preparing its own verified assessment, targeted for 16 October, which the Observer reported will separate claims that are fully or partly settled, agreed but awaiting payment, disputed and still under assessment. That breakdown should show more clearly how many households are still waiting on money rather than paperwork.
A protection gap measured in homes
The scale of what was never insured is the larger story. A preliminary assessment by the World Bank, prepared with the Inter-American Development Bank and published last November, put Melissa’s physical damage at US$8.8 billion and found that 41 per cent of the assessed damage was to residential buildings. Set against that, J$10.37 billion in residential payouts is a small fraction. The two figures are not a like-for-like measure, but the direction is clear: most of the cost of repairing Jamaican homes has fallen on families, their savings and remittances, and on public and charitable assistance rather than on insurance.
That pattern is not new. Many homes are built incrementally, on family land, without a mortgage that would require cover, and outside the formal valuation system that insurers rely on. For those households, a house is often the main store of wealth passed between generations, and Melissa showed how quickly that wealth can be lost when it sits unprotected.
What Isaias means for premiums
The outlook for premiums depends partly on events far from Jamaica. Hurricane Isaias made landfall in Florida late on Friday with sustained winds of 105 mph, a Category 2 storm, and has been linked to four deaths, with more than 600,000 people left without power, according to the BBC. Reinsurance brokers Marsh Re and Gallagher Re have put preliminary insured loss estimates in the mid single-digit billions of US dollars, and Gallagher Re said the storm is not expected to meaningfully influence the 1 January reinsurance renewals given the abundance of reinsurance capital, Business Insurance reported. Ratings agency AM Best noted after Melissa that Jamaican insurers rely heavily on international reinsurers for catastrophe cover, so a calm renewal season would ease one source of pressure on local home insurance pricing, though it would not erase the losses the market absorbed from Melissa itself.
What comes next
The FSC’s verified figures will be the next test of how far the claims process has truly run its course, particularly for the commercial and tourism properties that dominate the outstanding list. For homeowners, the more lasting question is whether Melissa changes behaviour: whether more households insure, insure to full value, and understand their deductibles before the next storm rather than after it. For lenders, developers and policymakers, the figures are a reminder that a resilient housing stock depends not only on stronger roofs and better building standards, but on a financial safety net that most Jamaican homes still do not have.
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