60 Seconds with Arch’s Cyber Insurance Experts

The cyber insurance world is increasingly complex. It’s understandable how our business leaders can be overwhelmed by the technical jargon and the ever-changing risk landscape. You know, all too often we see procurement processes and policy forms that are unnecessarily complex. It’s important we don’t lose sight of what really matters to our clients. And therefore, we’ve simplified the process. We brought together our team of experts from underwriting, risk engineering, legal and claims to design a new policy form and related practices that are clear and customizable. They directly address the unique needs of each of our clients. We always see it as solution first, by championing Arch’s commitment to Pursuing Better Together we work hand in hand with our broker partners, providing a modern and intuitive approach to cyber risk identification, mitigation, transfer and response. At the end of the day, it’s not just about protection, but also about partnership and about really working together to build a safer and stronger future. 

Identifying and mitigating cyber risk is a difficult task. One of the challenges that we’ve identified is the ability to accurately assess risk and engage with clients in a meaningful way. What we’ve done is we’ve developed an end-to-end solution. And we’re leveraging a combination of our industry expertise, as well as cutting edge technology. And that’s from underwriting to claims and then we’re giving clients access to all areas of our expertise. So, with this solution first mindset, we’re always looking for ways to say yes to providing cover for our clients. And what we’re doing is we’re leveraging our resources and expertise to work around challenges and provide effective solutions. This approach has led to us becoming a significant player in the cyber insurance industry, even during challenging market conditions. And I think because our clients recognize that we’re not only looking to identify risks, but also help them reduce and mitigate risk. We’re saying yes to a safer future.

I’ve been underwriting cyber insurance for a while. And traditionally, and as I’ve been coming up, it’s always been a relationship business and the relationship is between the policyholder, the broker, and the carrier. And what we’re starting to see over the past couple of years is a shift away from that relationship into more technical and standard operating procedures that’s hindering the cultivation of that relationship. At Arch we have a solutions first mindset and sometimes people go what does that mean Shiraz? What is a solutions first mindset? And we say we want to listen to our policyholders. We want to listen to our brokers and create a customizable solution. It provides customizable policy wording. It provides a dynamic underwriting process. It provides effective loss preventative services, and it provides proactive claims in case something negative happening. So all of these things combined, create a customizable solution for your business because our goal is not to just give you coverage. It’s to give the right coverage to you.

We all know that cyber insurance can feel like a bit of a puzzle for most businesses. A lot of organizations lack the proper controls in place to be able to fend off a cyber attack. They have to determine do they have the proper controls in place to be cyber insurable. They have to review findings from various third-party scans. And then also fill out applications to let the insurance companies understand what type of risk they are, what type of controls that they have. At Arch, we’re overcoming these challenges with a proactive, solutions first approach. Our underwriting is based on key controls that we apply across all classes of business. When we identify a risk that is lacking one of the key controls that we think is important, we are able to provide them a competitive quote to address that lack of a key control for them to review and to implement should they choose to. So, we’re not just vigilant in our analysis of external scans. We’re also confident that anything that we do bring to one of our insureds is a valid file. At Arch, it’s about more than just identifying vulnerabilities, it’s about quickly taking action to secure the future.

Cyber insurance is completely unlike other lines of insurance, primarily because when you’re dealing with a cyber incident, seconds matter. When an insured or policyholder gives us a call, oftentimes they’re dealing with the most stressful thing that they’ve ever had to deal with in a professional environment or even a personal environment. When we’re dealing with a cyber insurance claim, and it’s not just a pecuniary reimbursement transaction, it’s how can we help? What can we do to make things better? And how can we leverage our expertise, our solutions first mindset, to really help companies. We really wanted to create something that was proactive, so that we can assist our policyholders when they need it the most. And because of that, we built a claims team made of cyber claims attorneys with years of experience having handled hundreds, if not thousands, of the world’s most complex and severe cyber claims. We truly believe that our claims service will not only help our insureds deal with their worst day, but also hopefully stem this terrible endemic of cyber terrorism that we’re seeing.