Helping Small Businesses Survive and Thrive After Natural Disasters

_{From left to right: Scott Onder, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, Joanna Smith-Ramani,
Amolo Ng'weno, Jaxon Love}

Extreme weather events are increasing in both frequency and severity, disproportionately affecting small businesses and vulnerable communities. It was less than a year ago when wildfires ravaged the Los Angeles area, and recovery is still underway today. PayPal and our customers mobilized to raise over $1.5 million in relief aid in a matter of days. While financial support following a weather event is always needed, increasing access to resilience-enabling financial products like emergency loans, insurance, and savings is critical to reducing vulnerability and increasing the speed of recovery from floods, fires, heat waves, and other natural disasters.

At Climate Week 2025 in New York, PayPal and the CIFAR Alliance convened an expert panel-including Mary Ellen Iskenderian (Women's World Banking), Scott Onder (Mercy Corps Ventures), Amolo Ng'weno (BFA Global), Joanna Smith-Ramani (Aspen Institute), and Jaxon Love (PayPal)-for a conversation about how financial services can help small businesses survive and thrive in the era of extreme weather. Here are five key takeaways from the panel discussion:

Innovation can accelerate resilience

From AI-driven early warning systems to parametric insurance, stablecoins, and remittance-linked products, financial innovation is creating faster, more inclusive safety nets. These tools are especially critical for covering the critical "last mile" to ensure SMBs and individuals physically receive spendable cash in hand. Another promising area of interest is anticipatory financial products that can make disaster preparedness funds available to small business owners before a disaster strikes. By leveraging early warning systems, these financial products could allow a shopkeeper to receive funds that will enable them to move inventory or pile sandbags before a flood happens. These innovations hold the potential to significantly reduce financial losses for the business and the community.

Micro-enterprises need products and services to support their financial resilience

Global insured losses from natural catastrophes could reach $145 billion in 2025¹. However, most small businesses aren't insured at all, leaving them exposed and struggling to recover when disaster strikes. 80% of African retailers are informal businesses² requiring integrated insurance, savings products, and recovery credit alongside practical training on business continuity planning.

$900B remittance opportunity remains untapped

Global remittance flows represent a massive entry point for financial inclusion, but recipients tend to cash out immediately. Embedding financial education into remittance platforms could unlock access to insurance and other services.

The US faces similar challenges to emerging markets

Whether in the U.S. or emerging markets, small businesses face constant disruption, long recovery timelines, gaps in funding, and face a lack of coordinated support systems. This pattern of constant disruption negatively impacts the rate of innovation and growth for these businesses. Solutions piloted abroad - from digital finance tools to grassroots training - can inform resilience strategies everywhere.

The panel discussion highlighted how resilience isn't built in isolation. It's developed through collaboration across finance, tech, philanthropy, and community organizations to scale solutions that protect livelihoods and empower small businesses worldwide. PayPal is proud to be a member of the CIFAR Alliance, and we have seen firsthand how valuable cross industry collaboration can be. When financial services meet innovation, communities don't just survive the storms-they emerge stronger.

_{¹Swiss Re Institute. 2025. Natural catastrophes: insured losses on trend to USD 145 billion in 2025
²Business Tech Africa. 2024. Digitizing African Informal Trade Sectors}