Waylon Wong

It hit the southern coast of Jamaica with Category 4 winds, causing an estimated $995 million of damage.

But the Jamaican catastrophe bond still didn't trigger.

After Hurricane Beryl, people had a lot of questions for Fayval's predecessor, the previous minister of finance, Nigel Clark.

He was the one who originally set up the bond.

And they were asking him, like, why are we paying millions for insurance that doesn't pay out?

Fayvil's predecessor explained that for smaller hurricanes, Jamaica has a whole portfolio of other financial safety nets.

It has multiple rainy day funds, emergency loan agreements, other types of insurance.

This year, Hurricane Melissa was like the definition of that once-in-a-generation hurricane.

Within a week and a half, the cat bond officially triggered.

And Favol says she was surprised at how tuned in the whole country was.

Thanks to its cat bond, Jamaica is going to get $150 million.

In fact, the money just hit the country's bank accounts this week.

So the more investors who get into cat bonds, then if markets work like they're supposed to, the better rates that countries like Jamaica can get.

And the better rates insurance companies can get on the reinsurance they need.

Right now, the price of reinsurance is actually going down, in part because of competition from cat bonds.

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And I'm Waylon Wong.

This is NPR.