Earning customer loyalty while you are raising prices steeply is challenging and not all cyber insurers have managed it. But as the market has stabilized – premium rates only rose by an average of 1.6% in the third quarter of 2023 11 – cyber insurers have retained a level of customer engagement that other insurers envy. This tight web of interactions with customers enables cyber insurers to harbor brand ambitions that would be unimaginable to insurers in other lines of business. Cyber MGA Cowbell entered the UK market in December. “In terms of our long- term strategy in the UK,” said Simon Hughes, newly appointed UK general manager, “I want people to think of us like Uber, like Google – to become a verb.” 12 Cyber insurers such as Cowbell go to great lengths to build strong and mutually beneficial relationships with clients. For example, an app developed by CFC, one of the largest MGAs (which also now writes business through its own Lloyd’s syndicate), provides real-time personalized cyber threat alerts. And cyber insurers generally are in frequent contact with their insureds to help
them maintain appropriate defenses. Another large MGA, Coalition, touts what it calls its “active insurance” approach to helping its clients protect their data. Cyber risks also generate frequent claims compared to other lines of insurance. Attacks are relentless and, even with stringent precautions in place, some of them get through – usually due to human error. When they do, insurers can build strong and trusted brands by responding swiftly and providing a supportive incident response service. The result is that it is generally far more likely that small business insureds will know who their cyber insurer is (and not confuse their insurer with their broker) than for other lines of business. Cyber is still a small market, generating an estimated $12 billion in premium in 2022, and eye-watering price rises since 2019 may not have helped its popularity. But no other line has such growth potential. If the cyber market grows at the pace that many expect, it is very unlikely that the brands of the insurers leading the charge will be as low profile as most insurance brands are today.
11. CIAB Commercial Property/Casualty Market Index Q3/2023 12. ‘Cowbell UK looking to generate “new-new” business and grow market: Hughes.’ The Insurer, December 28, 2023
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