Raphael John-Lall

Founder and Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Risk Man­age­ment Acad­e­my (CR­MA), Ken Hack­shaw, is urg­ing busi­ness own­ers to con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing events in the Mid­dle East, warn­ing that the Iran war will con­tin­ue to have a neg­a­tive im­pact on T&T and the wider Caribbean re­gion.

He al­so spoke about how com­pa­nies can use risk man­age­ment tech­niques to in­ter­pret the lat­est geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments and de­vel­op ap­pro­pri­ate re­spons­es.

Last Tues­day, UWI-ROYTEC and the CR­MA host­ed a we­bi­nar on nav­i­gat­ing the con­flict in the Mid­dle East, fo­cus­ing on iden­ti­fy­ing risks and build­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­silience.

ROYTEC, in its pro­mo­tion of the we­bi­nar, not­ed that es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween Iran and the Unit­ed States have the po­ten­tial to dis­rupt oil mar­kets, ship­ping routes, sup­ply chains, and fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty, and en­cour­aged Caribbean or­gan­i­sa­tions to be pre­pared to an­tic­i­pate and man­age these emerg­ing risks.

Hack­shaw urged busi­ness own­ers to re­main alert.

“Again, the im­pact may not have reached your doorstep’s eyes yet. Do not fall in­to this com­pla­cent head­space that it is not hap­pen­ing here or it can­not hap­pen here. And again, even if that con­flict was to end to­day, that cas­cad­ing im­pact is go­ing to be around for an­oth­er 12 to 18 to 24 months.”

He used the ex­am­ple of pos­si­ble fu­el short­ages, giv­en Iran’s mis­sile at­tacks on fa­cil­i­ties through­out the Mid­dle East, and warned that en­er­gy-de­pen­dent Caribbean economies will suf­fer if this oc­curs.

“Fu­el is be­com­ing a prob­lem, es­pe­cial­ly in Eu­rope, where the us­age and the stor­age is be­ing de­plet­ed and not be­ing re­plen­ished as quick­ly as it should be. And if planes aren’t fly­ing as they should, tourism is def­i­nite­ly im­pact­ed in the Caribbean. And the sup­ply chain, both by air and by sea, is go­ing to be im­pact­ed. So how are you go­ing to pre­pare for that? What are you do­ing now? And so, my at­tempt here is to probe and push a lit­tle fur­ther,” he stat­ed.

The ris­ing price of fu­el in­ter­na­tion­al­ly could im­pact the cost of food in T&T and across the re­gion, he added.

“And that im­pact could be very di­rect or in­di­rect. And I know many gov­ern­ments are sub­si­dis­ing that, but there’s go­ing to come a point, if that point has not al­ready reached, where to fill up your tank, the cost to fill up your tank in­creas­es. The cost of prod­ucts you go in­to su­per­mar­kets to buy will in­crease.”

He al­so gave ex­am­ples of how the in­sur­ance in­dus­try could be af­fect­ed.

“This could be, God for­bid, one of you, if you’re an en­tre­pre­neur, if you have a small busi­ness, or if you’re work­ing for an in­sur­ance in­sti­tu­tion, for ex­am­ple. So, if your cus­tomers get im­pact­ed, your com­pa­ny gets im­pact­ed.”

He ad­vised fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions to mon­i­tor their cus­tomer base to as­sess how clients are be­ing af­fect­ed by the cri­sis and to de­vel­op ap­pro­pri­ate re­spons­es.

“So, you’re a small bank, a cred­it union, an in­sur­ance provider, your clients are prob­a­bly small. Small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es, or en­tre­pre­neurs, you know, in­di­vid­u­als that dri­ve taxis or have a gar­den that are agri­cul­tur­ists. There’s go­ing be im­pact to them. So, one sce­nario analy­sis tip I can of­fer is look at your cus­tomer base, do a scan of your cus­tomer base, and then there may be a group of cus­tomers who will have more of a di­rect im­pact than oth­ers.

“Look at those cus­tomers that can be di­rect­ly im­pact­ed, and then maybe have a con­ver­sa­tion. You may have a re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment team or some­one with­in your loan de­part­ment or cred­it risk de­part­ment.”

He point­ed out that if some­one pay­ing in­sur­ance be­comes un­em­ployed, one of the first things they may do is stop mak­ing pay­ments.

“If you have loans with banks, and you get dis­placed, or your busi­ness is im­pact­ed, one of the first things to get to have that im­pact is pay­ment of loans. So as the in­di­vid­u­als, or the em­ploy­ees, or the res­i­dents of an is­land get im­pact­ed, the in­sti­tu­tions on those is­lands will be im­pact­ed.”

He al­so warned about the dan­gers of ran­somware at­tacks.

“So, an­oth­er chan­nel is state-aligned cy­ber­at­tacks, ran­somware at­tacks in fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, da­ta breach­es, rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age. We have not start­ed see­ing too much of this. Glob­al­ly, near­ly half of all cy­ber­at­tacks now at­tack small or medi­um-sized busi­ness­es. And the ques­tion is why? And the an­swer is sim­ple. Small se­cu­ri­ty teams, low­er per­ceived ma­tu­ri­ty, lim­it­ed de­tec­tion and in­ci­dent re­sponse, high val­ue ac­cess in­to large en­ter­prise and gov­ern­ment sup­ply chains.”

Hack­shaw al­so ad­vised busi­ness­es to have a busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan.

“So, if you’re talk­ing about busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, do you have a busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan for your home? You’re talk­ing about build­ing re­silience and be­ing able to bounce for­ward. God for­bid some­thing hap­pens. What’s your dis­as­ter re­cov­ery plan? How do you then bounce for­ward if - or not if - when you are im­pact­ed?”

Strait of Hor­muz

One of the thorni­est is­sues in the Mid­dle East at present is dis­rup­tion to the Strait of Hor­muz.

Around 20 to 30 per cent of glob­al fer­tilis­er ex­ports, and near­ly 46 per cent of glob­al urea trade, pass through the strait, af­fect­ing ma­jor agri­cul­tur­al mar­kets such as Chi­na, Brazil, and In­dia.

Hack­shaw said this could im­pact re­mit­tances to the Caribbean and may even lead to short­ages on su­per­mar­ket shelves.

“So, you have the Strait of Hor­muz that’s closed. You have the Red Sea, where that’s a prob­lem be­cause the Houthis have promised to at­tack ships mov­ing through the Red Sea. The ma­jor­i­ty of nat­ur­al gas and fer­tilis­ers and oth­er am­mo­nia prod­ucts that get across to the su­per­mar­kets and to you, that’s putting pres­sures, re­duced re­mit­tances, liq­uid­i­ty stress.”

He al­so ad­dressed ris­ing oil prices and urged busi­ness own­ers to pre­pare for var­i­ous sce­nar­ios.

“If oil reach­es $150, as of this morn­ing, it’s cur­rent­ly trad­ing at $100 a bar­rel. It’s trad­ing, I think, at $107, no, $111. Let’s do a hy­poth­e­sis here, let’s do a sce­nario analy­sis. So, oil reach­es $150, what can hap­pen? What are the worst things that can hap­pen?”

Risk en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tant Dr War­ren Black, based in Aus­tralia, al­so spoke, not­ing that 2026 be­gan with sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges. He ref­er­enced the World Eco­nom­ic Re­port pre­sent­ed in Jan­u­ary.

The Iran war be­gan weeks lat­er.

“What start­ed out as a quick sur­gi­cal strike has evolved in­to a pro­longed glob­al dis­rup­tor and in­cludes a glob­al fu­el cri­sis, es­ca­lat­ing sup­ply short­ages, glob­al hy­per­in­fla­tion, frac­tured geopo­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ships, a shift­ed pow­er bal­ance, a pend­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, and mass eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty. So, our work­ing world is once again ripe for dis­rup­tion. It doesn’t sound great.”

He al­so ad­vised busi­ness own­ers and in­di­vid­u­als to plan ahead, warn­ing of pos­si­ble food and oth­er short­ages if the glob­al cri­sis wors­ens.

Risk man­age­ment con­sul­tant Dr Nas­reen Al Qaseer, based in Bahrain, al­so warned of se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for the Caribbean.

“In the Caribbean, there could be vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty for tourism, trade and fi­nance. The Caribbean faces a triple shock im­pact­ing eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, sim­i­lar to Bahrain. What we see here is a chain re­ac­tion. There is tourism pres­sure. Al­so, ris­ing fu­el costs, high­er air fares of 30 per cent to 40 per cent for the very min­i­mum. The de­mand is de­clin­ing. Tourism is the eco­nom­ic back­bone and is un­der pres­sure.”