You are Mariana Canul Echeverría, head of Claims and Catastrophes at Seguros Chakté, in Mérida, Mexico. It is 5:40 a.m. on Wednesday 15 September 2027, and Hurricane Tadeo, a category 4 storm, made landfall between Playa del Carmen and Tulum just after midnight. At nine, in front of the chief executive, you have to decide what capacity you will handle the claims with.
The situation
Chakté has sold property insurance in Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche for thirty years. It insures 204,000 homes and 6,000 businesses, most of them hotels and shops on the Caribbean coast, and collects about 2,000 million pesos of premium a year. Its catastrophe reinsurance pays above a 600 million retention and up to a loss of 5,500 million; anything beyond that, Chakté pays. Its eligible own funds are 5,000 million, against a capital requirement of 1,700.
The first reports point to about 42,000 claims: 6,000 homes left uninhabitable, at about 220,000 pesos each; 32,000 homes with lesser damage, at about 42,000; and 4,000 businesses with about 600,000 pesos of damage each, plus the hotels' business interruption. The modeller puts the loss between 4,900 and 7,100 million, with a central value of 5,700. Rodrigo Uc, the chief actuary, sums it up in one line: "If the central value is right, we are already past the top of the reinsurance."
Your 40 adjusters close about 6,000 claims a month at full stretch. Before the season you signed a standby contract with Ajustadores del Golfo, an independent firm, for up to 14,000 claims a month at agreed fees; activating it costs 30 million. Other firms offer adjusters at market rates, as available, in the same week every insurer on the coast is looking for them. Meanwhile a family out of its home costs about 25,000 pesos a month in lodging, and the law requires each claim to be paid 30 days after its documents are complete.
The chief executive, Arturo Peón Cámara, wants two things: that the press does not turn Chakté into the story of Tadeo, and that the regulator is kept informed. At 8:15 Paulina Solís, the head of Communications, sends you a photo from Tulum: a family sitting with its belongings in rubbish bags in front of what is left of its house.