If your organization isn’t fully prepared for hurricane season, you’re not alone — and you’re not out of time. The organizations that recover fastest built the right plan, made sure everyone understood it and tested it before a storm forced them to. These planning decisions don’t require months of work. They require action. And the case for acting now keeps growing, with insured natural catastrophe losses exceeding $100 billion for six consecutive years and business interruption ranking among the top risks organizations face worldwide.1

A regional bank in North Carolina showed what that looks like in practice. When a major hurricane wiped out interstates for months and cut off communications across the region, the bank was the first financial institution in the area to reopen. Their strong post-disaster plan gave them the capacity to do far more, including coordinating with the National Guard to distribute cash to the community and bringing in water and supplies once roads reopened.

“The key to their success was that they continued to revise, update and test their plan,” says Chrystie Howard, leader of Enterprise Risk Management for HUB International’s Complex Risk Practice. “People were trained. Every functional area was involved. Everybody knew what to do.”

That quick response is also a financial advantage. Organizations that reopen first protect revenue, retain clients and hold market positions while competitors are still assessing the damage.

What does real hurricane preparedness look like?

The distance between intention and execution of a climate risk management plan is wider than you’d expect.

“Most leaders have a false sense of confidence in their planning capability,” says Brian Schnese, HUB Risk Services manager and practice leader of Organizational Resilience. “I hear constantly, ‘I think we have some plans around here somewhere.’ That’s a critical gap. You cannot execute a plan your people haven’t seen.”

Schnese says the right sequence is non-negotiable: Develop the plan, socialize the plan and exercise the plan. Three steps make that possible:

  • Start with a business impact analysis (BIA) — Determine which organizational functions are critical, what they depend on and where downtime would hit revenue hardest.
  • Make sure everyone has seen the plan — Every functional area needs to know its role before a crisis — not during one.
  • Exercise the plan through tabletop scenarios — A facilitated exercise injects real disruption scenarios and surfaces gaps while there’s still time to address them.

Where does insurance coverage fit into your preparedness plan?

Business continuity planning and insurance strategy are more connected than most organizations realize, with business interruption insurance being the most critically overlooked coverage.

“Business interruption often falls through the gaps,” says Howard. “A broker should be conducting a gap analysis to understand where — or whether — it’s covered.”

For organizations in highly exposed regions, parametric structures are worth exploring as well. These policies can pay out in non-damage business interruption scenarios, such as when a location is rendered inaccessible or inoperable even without physical damage.

Supply chain vulnerabilities carry their own insurance implications as well, and underwriters are factoring them into business interruption coverage terms. Demonstrating business resilience through documented post-disaster plans, supply chain analysis and actively tested continuity plans can mean better terms and, in highly exposed regions, meaningful cost savings.

Organizations that recover fastest also have recovery resources lined up long before a storm arrives.

“Your broker should be talking to you about climate risk, about your supply chain, about what they’ve seen happen in other locations,” says Howard. “That should be a constant conversation, not an annual one.”

Focused hurricane preparedness for businesses is a narrower lift than most leaders expect. With a committed team, Schnese says a plan can be developed, socialized and exercised in weeks. “The scope is quite narrow. Once you know the right steps, you can move quickly.”

“If you have not lost your facility yet, it is not too late to start planning,” says Howard.

THE HUB EDGE

Hurricane season peaks between August and October, but severe weather preparedness is a year-round discipline. Whether you’re starting from scratch or stress-testing an existing plan, consider these priorities:

  • Conduct business impact analysis — Identify critical functions, dependencies and vulnerabilities.
  • Follow the right sequence — Develop the plan, socialize the plan and exercise the plan.
  • Evaluate your business interruption coverage — Understand whether existing policies cover business interruption and explore parametric structures that pay out based on triggers, not just physical damage.
  • Strengthen your supply chain — Single-source dependencies are both operational and coverage vulnerabilities. Demonstrating redundancy can improve terms and insurability with carriers.
  • Engage your broker year-round — A strong broker brings catastrophe modeling, gap analysis, continuity planning resources and access to disaster recovery networks.

Connect with HUB’s risk management experts to start building — or stress-testing — your severe weather preparedness strategy.

1Allianz, “Allianz Risk Barometer 2026,” January 2026.