The World Forum of Catastrophe Programmes (WFCP) is an informal platform for the voluntary exchange of ideas, expertise and practices among government created or government sponsored insurance schemes covering natural catastrophes.

The mean of public sponsoring creates a wide diversity of insurance schemes: some of them are state owned companies, some are not; some have a national jurisdiction, some a sub national one or others are even supra national. This same diversity applies to the risks covered, ranging from single to multi-peril; to the roles the schemes adopt as direct insurers or reinsurers, or to the scope of the cover (residential, commercial and/or industrial properties, personal injury…).

Nevertheless, although member schemes provide very different answers depending on their context, most of the issues they must resolve are common, and therefore WFCP is a valuable tool for the exchange of views and mutual learning among members.

The WFCP was established in 2006 following a meeting of a group of senior executives of several national disaster insurance schemes during the Centenary Conference of the San Francisco Earthquake. It was agreed unanimously that the discussions were of sufficient value to continue meetings on an annual basis.

This webpage provides a panoramic view of the WFCP activities, its members, and of their subjects of common interest.