Banks can play a vital role in helping affected communities to cope with natural disasters. Using data on 92 damaging tropical storms, this paper explores the channels through which 111 individual banks from 20 Caribbean and Central American jurisdictions have been affected. Our results suggest that damaging tropical storms are associated with immediate and long-lasting adverse funding shocks. Banks from the small island economies face withdrawals of deposits, while banks from the continental countries are affected by adverse shocks to short-term funding. In both regions bank lending to the private sector drops in the initial years. The natural disaster shock is associated with persistent loan defaults and bank losses in the continental countries, whereas in the small island economies losses only start materializing after four years. In the two regions, the tropical storm recovery is thus credit-less.

银行可以在帮助受影响社区应对自然灾害方面发挥至关重要的作用。本文利用 92 场破坏性热带风暴的数据，探讨了来自 20 个加勒比海和中美洲司法管辖区的 111 家银行受到影响的渠道。我们的研究结果表明，破坏性的热带风暴与直接和长期的不利资金冲击有关。小岛屿经济体的银行面临存款被撤走的问题，而大陆国家的银行则受到短期融资不利冲击的影响。在这两个地区，银行对私营部门的贷款在最初几年都有所下降。自然灾害冲击与大陆国家持续的贷款违约和银行损失有关，而小岛屿经济体的损失在四年后才开始显现。因此，在这两个地区，热带风暴的恢复是无信用的。