Drone view of damage to coastal homes after Hurricane Melissa made landfall, in Alligator Pond, Jamaica, Oct. 29, 2025.

Maria Alejandra Cardona | Reuters

Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane of the year, made landfall this week as a Category 5 storm in Jamaica. The strength of the storm means it will likely trigger a full payout from a catastrophe bond designed to provide funds to the island in the event of catastrophic weather events.

The $150 million catastrophe bond, structured by Aon, is intended to help the island’s people rebuild after natural disasters by providing Jamaica parametric coverage against losses from named storms. The policy took effect this year and lasts through 2027.

The government of Jamaica is the first government in the Caribbean region, and the first of any small island state, to independently sponsor a cat bond, according to Aon. Its likely payout demonstrates the value of a unique type of backstop funded by the private markets.

In order to trigger the full payment, the storm has to meet a particular strength criteria. The central pressure of the storm must be at or below 900 millibars as its makes landfall and crosses the island nation.

Early data from the National Hurricane Center shows Hurricane Melissa’s pressure stayed below 900 millibars in several areas. Those readings are in the process of being verified by an independent calculation agent.

“While the final numbers are still being verified, the early signs suggest the transaction is doing what it was designed to do: getting critical funds to the country quickly after a major disaster,” Chris Lefferdink, Aon’s head of insurance-linked securities for North America, said in a statement.  

The review process typically takes 2 to 3 weeks, and the earliest possible payout to Jamaica could come in approximately 1 month, according to a spokesperson from Aon.

A drone view shows an affected area after Hurricane Melissa made landfall, in Crane Road, Black River, Jamaica, October 30, 2025.

Maria Alejandra Cardona | Reuters

Previous parametric transactions payouts have taken 3 months or more, but for this event Aon used an innovative data source to enable faster payments.

The catastrophe bond was placed using the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s “capital at risk” program, which is used to transfer the risks associated with natural catastrophes to the capital markets, allowing the country to access funds quickly after a major event.

“What you have is a capital provider putting funds in the pool, an insurer putting the coupon for those funds in the pool [and] if the storm hits that criteria, they get the money in a much quicker fashion,” Aon CFO Edmund Reese told CNBC’s Contessa Brewer in an interview.

Damaged furniture and debris after Hurricane Melissa made landfall, in Black River, Jamaica, Oct. 30, 2025.

Octavio Jones | Reuters

Catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities were created in the mid 1990s in the wake of Hurricane Andrew’s destruction. They’ve since grown in popularity, with the cat bond market growing by over 50% since the end of 2022 to nearly $55 billion.

“Public-private partnerships like Jamaica’s continue to highlight how parametric insurance can deliver rapid, transparent relief in the wake of severe storms,” Lefferdink said.

Jamaica very narrowly missed the requirements necessary to receive a payout from a separate cat bond when Hurricane Beryl battered the island in 2024, resulting in $995 million in damages to homes, crops and infrastructure, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The post Hurricane Melissa set to trigger $150 million Jamaica catastrophe bond to help rebuild appeared first on Our Story Insight.

A screen showing the price of various cryptocurrencies against the US dollar displayed at a Crypto Panda cryptocurrency store in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. 

Lam Yik | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The crypto market slid Friday after President Donald Trump unveiled his modified “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries.

The price of bitcoin fell 3% to $113,231.41, while ether and the Solana token fell 6% and 5%, respectively.

The descent triggered a wave of long liquidations, which forces traders to sell their assets at market price to settle their debts, pushing prices lower. Bitcoin saw $228 million in liquidations across centralized exchanges in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass, and ether saw $262 million.

Crypto-linked stocks suffered deeper losses. Coinbase led the way, down 16% following its disappointing second-quarter earnings report. Circle fell 8.4%, Galaxy Digital lost 5.4%, and ether treasury company Bitmine Immersion was down %7.4. Bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy was down by 8.7%.

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Bitcoin falls below $115,000

The stock moves came amid a new wave of risk off sentiment after President Trump issued new tariffs ranging between 10% and 41%, triggering worries about increasing inflation and the Federal Reserve’s ability to cut interest rates. In periods of broad based derisking, crypto tends to get hit as investors pull out of the most speculative and volatile assets. Technical resilience and institutional demand for bitcoin and ether are helping support their prices.

“After running red hot in July, this is a healthy strategic cooldown. Markets aren’t reacting to a crisis, they’re responding to the lack of one,” said Ben Kurland, CEO at crypto research platform DYOR. “With no new macro catalyst on the horizon, capital is rotating out of speculative assets and into safer ground … it’s a calculated pause.”

Crypto is coming off a winning month but could soon hit the brakes amid the new macro uncertainty, and in a month usually characterized by lower trading volumes and increased volatility. Bitcoin gained 8% in July, according to Coin Metrics, while ether surged more than 49%.

Ether ETFs saw more than $5 billion in inflows in July alone (with just a single day of outflows of $1.8 million on July 2), bringing it’s total cumulative inflows to $9.64 billion to date. Bitcoin ETFs saw $114 million in outflows in the final trading session of July, bringing its monthly inflows to about $6 billion out of a cumulative $55 billion.

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