Best Cyber Insurance 2021

best cyber insurance

If you haven’t purchased cyber insurance for your business yet, you may be looking for which insurance company is “the best” online, and hit this video or article.

Where can you find the best Cyber Insurance policy?

Let me start by saying as an independent broker, I have access to just about every cyber insurance carrier in the market, and we write a lot of cyber insurance with a lot of different insurers so I’m coming from this a very broad perspective. 

The simple answer of which cyber insurance company is the best or which cyber insurance policy is the best is the one you have.  In today’s world, to be uninsured for what is the most potent, dangerous, and widespread threat your business faces is crazy – simply crazy – mind-blowingly crazy. 

Back to who is best when it comes to cyber insurance.  The answer to that question, like a lot of my answers to insurance questions is – it depends. 

What does the best cyber insurance depend on?

It’s going to depend on the size of your firm, what you do, what your unique risk characteristics are, and what controls you have in place. 

Broadly speaking the best cyber insurance is going to combine broad insurance protection as well as some solid risk management tools and excellent post-breach services, so let me break this down.   

When cyber insurance first became a real insurance product around 2000 most businesses didn’t even know it existed.  In fact, most insurance brokers didn’t even know it existed.  That policy was crafted by a group of attorneys working with underwriters at Lloyds of London – not surprising that Lloyds was the first product to market since they are known as a market of innovation.  Shortly thereafter, AIG and Chubb came out with their first cyber policy forms. 

Today, over 80 insurers are writing some form of cyber insurance.  Many are the traditional “brand name” insurers you may be familiar with, such as Travelers, Hartford, Chubb, CNA,  and so on. 

The newest entrants to the cyber field are what we call MGAs or Managing General Agents who have built unique policy forms and embedded technology risk control attributes into them.  These MGAs don’t take on the insurance risk of their policies, but instead backstop their policies with other underwriters, such as syndicates at Lloyds of London.  These are interesting products and are very cutting edge. 

The best policies as I mentioned are going to be those that provide broad protection, high limits and sub-limits of coverage, good risk control services, and excellent claim response services. 

What to avoid when it comes to cyber insurance? 

Avoid adding cyber to your business owner’s policy.  Typically, these endorsements only provide a low limit of protection with a very limited scope of coverage.  If it’s the only thing you can afford, then okay, but just be aware that you’re not really getting what I would call “real” cyber insurance. 

The other thing to know is that if you purchased cyber insurance a few years ago and haven’t reviewed that policy with your broker recently, I would encourage you to do so.  Several older policy forms contain serious limitations and caps on certain coverages. 

Now, there may be a problem with asking your broker to analyze your cyber policy, and that is that many insurance brokers don’t really understand cyber.  So, they just sell one insurance company’s policy form or they don’t know how to do that analysis.  Our cyber policy audit contains over 25 checkpoints to dive deep into a cyber policy and compare its value to today’s standards.   

Here’s the bottom line on the best cyber insurance.

The best cyber insurance policy is one that is tailored to your firm’s needs and particular attributes.  In fact, it may not be just one policy, it could be several that are combined from different insurers to build up sufficient limits of protection that no one insurer can offer.  And there again is where you need a specialist to understand the nuances of crafting a policy or an entire cyber program. 

Want to learn more about how we approach cyber insurance and business insurance in general?  Why not give me a call or drop me an email.  I love working with business owners and cyber is a big part of what I do, I get it, I understand it and I have great relationships with the leading cyber underwriters looking for companies like yours to insure.

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