Americas · Banking, Financial Services & Insurance
Hurricane Melissa · Jamaica · 28 October 2025
Client
Regional bank and general insurer · branch, ATM and claims operations across the Caribbean
The Event
Melissa made landfall in Westmoreland Parish at 160 knots and 897 mb — the strongest landfall on record in Jamaica. Damage reached US$12.2 billion. Every member bank branch closed and ATMs went offline: of 907 machines nationally, 454 were operational the next day. Full recovery took five months.
What the Client Was Facing
- Staff displacement blocked reopening. The central bank named it a primary constraint — no branch reopens before its people are found.
- Cash-in-transit across a collapsed road network. Armoured-carrier availability bound cash access in the parishes with least digital fallback.
- Fifteen property loss adjusters nationally. No amount of internal surge staffing moves an external ceiling.
How Datasurfr Helped
- Monitor Hurricane-centre products on the live map days ahead of landfall, alongside the branch, ATM and staff footprint.
- Assess Branches, ATMs, cash centres and staff homes mapped; exposure ranked in descending order by parish.
- Decide Scenario sets pre-positioned claims and cash-in-transit resources, and estimated claim exposure parish by parish.
- Act Welfare checks swept staff parish by parish; branch and ATM status published over SMS and WhatsApp.
Impact
- Staff accountability used as the formal gate for reopening a branch
- Restoration sequence defensible to the regulator, built from ranked exposure
- Claim exposure estimated early enough to inform reserve planning
“The storm lasted a day. The recovery took five months, and one question ran through all of it: which branch reopens next, and why.”
