This year's Insurance Times "Brokerfest" focused presentations and discussions on the best areas of growth for brokers in the UK, and how to best grapple with technology for change. To little surprise, cyber insurance was brought up at the "party" as one such area for growth, citing an 11% penetration of UK companies having some form of cyber coverage.
The cyber working stream started off by offering a survey of the cyber risk threat landscape, and then pushed on into how best to sell cyber insurance to companies. Presenters hypothesized the common concerns and objections to cyber insurance and how best to dispel these concerns; they discussed real-life incidents and scenarios seen in the US and the UK; and they touched upon some of the various costs that UK companies can face in light of a cyber attack.
The day's conversation formed the basis for what is likely to come in future conversations for the UK cyber broking paradigm - how to model the threat landscape and financial loss without relying upon mere imagination. The cyber risk conversation can start by highlighting which threats exist and what the potential costs are for a company. However, with a lower penetration rate of financial risk transfer for cyber in the UK and given the dynamic nature of cyber and technology, there seems to be a need for a data-driven approach to understand the potential financial loss tailored to individual companies.
