Sandbags and boarded windows handle the physical side of typhoon season. What they don’t handle is the financial aftershock — lost income, replacement costs, the errands that pile up once the water recedes. That’s the space CashKO is moving into with a nationwide rollout of its calamity microinsurance program.
The InsurTech firm, a RuralNet subsidiary, is expanding as NDRRMC data shows roughly 7.5 million people affected nationwide by cyclones Luis, Maymay, and Neneng alongside this year’s habagat rains, a reminder that disaster planning has to extend past the house itself, especially for Metro Manila families who also lean on income from relatives working elsewhere in storm-affected provinces.
Speaking at the 2026 Microfinance Council of the Philippines conference, CashKO Insurance Brokerage CEO Justin Arcenas noted that 87% of MFI borrowers surveyed in 2024 wanted calamity protection, typhoons chief among their worries.
CashKO distributes through RuralNet’s API platform, letting partner financial institutions customize coverage limits, payout rules, and how the insurance ties into existing loans, a “made-to-measure” structure the company says grew out of an earlier pilot that paid out claims to families affected by Typhoons Tino and Uwan. For now, that’s indemnity coverage: submit photo evidence of home damage, get assessed, get paid, usually around PHP 5,000.
A second option lands in Q4: parametric insurance, which triggers automatically once predefined conditions — typhoon category, earthquake magnitude — are hit, confirmed by satellite rather than an in-person visit. It’s built for situations where individual assessments can’t keep pace with how many households are affected at once.
“For vulnerable communities, the value of insurance is measured by how quickly and effectively it can help them recover when disaster strikes,” Arcenas said. Since 2019, CashKO’s network has reached over 6 million underserved Filipinos and approved more than 33,000 claims, with 16,000-plus of those processed in 2025 alone.
Learn more: micro.cashko-insurance.com