Summary record of the third session of the Resilience Council

Chair: Gregorio Yap, Chair of the Resilience Council (Tacloban, Philippines)
Recipient: —

Meeting details

Date: Wednesday, 22 April 2026
Sittings: Asia-Pacific, 06:00 UTC; Europe/Africa/Americas, 16:00 UTC
Attendance: The Council comprised 47 members from 32 countries as of this date. A separate consolidated headcount for the two sittings was not available in the published attendance data. The two sittings were convened as parts of the same session; this record does not add their attendance figures together.

Agenda

1. Opening remarks and adoption of the agenda.
2. Review of the call for evidence on RS-001, the proposed Reopen Standard.
3. Initial discussion of reported disaster-related interruption, insurance claims, bridge funding and continuity support.
4. Consideration of evidence quality, the five-part pattern test and next steps.
5. Decisions, action items and date of the next session.

Proceedings

1. Opening. Gregorio Yap opened the session and welcomed participants to both sittings. He recalled that the Council’s agenda item RS-001 concerned recovery after a disaster, including the time taken to decide insurance claims, access to short-term bridge funding and practical continuity planning for micro businesses. He emphasized that the Council was at an evidence-gathering stage. The meeting was not asked to adopt a standard or to attribute responsibility to any named company.

2. Purpose and limits of the discussion. The Chair noted that the Council should distinguish a member’s account of an individual experience from a recurring practice that could justify a common recommendation. He invited members to identify the sequence of events, the evidence they could share, and the practical consequence for reopening. He asked speakers not to identify their own businesses or to make allegations about named service providers. Where an account referred to an insurer, lender, public authority or commercial platform, the record would describe the relevant type of institution rather than name it.

3. Evidence position at the date of the session. The Secretariat’s figures placed the Resilience Council at 47 members in 32 countries, with four reports from four countries. The reported situations were all disaster-related. The median amount at stake was approximately US$23,800. The reports came from members whose teams were divided equally between “Just me” and teams of 10–49, according to the available report data. Members cautioned that these figures described a small early evidence set and could not, by themselves, establish the frequency or distribution of a practice across the wider population of small businesses.

4. International context. Participants considered the relevance of disaster risk reduction to small-business continuity. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has reported that small and medium-sized enterprises bear approximately 75 per cent of business disaster losses, and that disaster risk reduction can reduce losses by up to a third.¹ The Chair said that this context supported careful attention to preparedness and recovery, but did not substitute for evidence about the particular processes members were reporting. The Council would not treat a broad global estimate as proof of any individual claim.

5. Contribution from Marites Villanueva, Tacloban, Philippines. Ms. Villanueva described how an owner trying to reopen after a severe weather event may need to address several urgent costs before an insurance decision is made. She said that a claim process can be difficult to plan around when the owner cannot tell what documents remain outstanding or when a decision is expected. She recommended that any future proposal distinguish between acknowledging a claim, requesting further information and making a decision. The Chair recorded the point as a proposed process distinction, not as a finding about a particular insurer.

6. Contribution from Lukas Schneider, Dresden, Germany. Mr. Schneider spoke about the value of clear, written communication during a disruption. In his view, an owner should be able to identify the contact point for a claim, the documents required and the next expected step without repeatedly restarting the inquiry. He cautioned that a fixed deadline would need to allow for cases where essential evidence was unavailable immediately after an emergency. He supported a target that included notice to the claimant when additional information was needed, rather than a deadline that left a claim without explanation.

7. Contribution from Valeria Hernández, Oaxaca, Mexico. Ms. Hernández focused on the interval between interruption and reopening. She said that a business may face urgent obligations before a final assessment of loss is complete, and that short-term finance can therefore matter even where a claim is still under review. She asked the Council to examine what “bridge funding” should mean in a future draft, including how it might be accessed, what minimum information could be required and how an owner would be told whether an application was incomplete. She did not propose that the Council prescribe a particular provider or financing product.

8. Contribution from Tomás Benítez, Córdoba, Argentina. Mr. Benítez addressed continuity planning before a disruption. He supported short, usable guidance that an owner could prepare without specialist staff, and said that the guidance should cover essential records, communications and the practical steps needed to resume operations. He cautioned against making a plan a compliance exercise that would add paperwork without helping an owner act. He also suggested that future consultation ask members which forms of support are usable when a team consists of one person.

9. Discussion of supporting evidence. Members discussed what could make future reports easier to compare. Suggestions included recording the type of disruption, the date operations were interrupted, the date an application or claim was submitted, any request for further information, the date a decision or payment was received, and the period during which the business could not operate normally. Participants stressed that members should be free to report approximate dates or amounts where exact information could expose private or commercially sensitive details. The Chair said that the Council should not request documents that members did not hold or could not safely share.

10. Pattern-test method. The Chair reviewed the Assembly’s five-part pattern test: Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. Members agreed that the four reports then available were useful for defining questions but were not enough to determine whether RS-001 met the test. They noted that “spread” required attention to different countries and circumstances, while “corroboration” could include independently documented timelines as well as accounts from other members. The Council did not assign a pass or fail status to RS-001 at this session.

11. Discussion of potential design principles. Participants identified three possible areas for further examination: timely and intelligible claim handling; access to temporary liquidity after a declared disaster; and continuity support proportionate to the capacity of a micro business. These were recorded as areas for evidence and drafting, not as settled requirements. The proposed 30-day period for deciding an insurance claim and 10-day period for bridge funding were identified as questions in the RS-001 agenda, rather than approved deadlines. Members asked that any draft explain when a clock would start, how exceptions would be communicated and what minimum information would be available to an applicant.

12. External research reference. The Council considered a reported comparison from a Japan METI survey, presented through a UNDRR report: 8 per cent of prepared small and medium-sized enterprises had not recovered sales, compared with 19 per cent of those not prepared.² Members treated this as context for examining continuity planning, not as proof that any one planning measure caused a particular outcome. The Chair asked that later materials preserve the qualification and identify the source accurately.

13. Decision on evidence collection. The Council agreed to keep the RS-001 call for evidence open and to invite further reports on claims, temporary funding and continuity support. Members would be encouraged to provide a chronology and describe the practical effect of delays, while omitting business names and any information they could not safely disclose. The Secretariat would continue to report aggregate figures using the established categories and would avoid presenting early totals as representative of all micro businesses.

14. Decision on drafting. The Council agreed that preparatory work could map possible components of a future Reopen Standard, but that no normative text would be presented as approved at this stage. Any working outline should separate claims handling, bridge funding and continuity planning, and should state the evidentiary questions attached to each. The outline would remain subject to evidence review, the five-part pattern test, public consultation and the Assembly process set out in the Rules of Procedure.

15. Decision on member safeguards. The Chair confirmed that members’ identities and business details would not be included in public summaries unless the member had chosen a public seat and consented to attribution. Speakers’ contributions in this record are summarized by names and locations for the purpose of this staged record; they are not linked to a named business. The Council would continue to describe institutional practices by category and reserve named seats for the chief executives who may be asked to adopt a standard.

16. Closing observations. Members agreed that reopening is not a single administrative event. It may depend on whether an owner can establish the extent of loss, meet immediate obligations, obtain a decision and resume essential operations. They asked the Council to keep any eventual proposal specific enough to be assessed and implemented, while recognizing that events and documentation differ. The Chair thanked participants for distinguishing reported experience from conclusions and closed the session.

Decisions and action items

Closure

The session concluded with the next Resilience Council session provisionally scheduled for 20 May 2026. The date and sitting times were to be confirmed through the Secretariat’s meeting notice. No standard was adopted, no

pattern-test determination was made, and no letter to a chief executive was authorized at this session.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices for small and medium-sized enterprises”
2. UNDRR, Resilience of SMEs report (including Japan METI survey findings)