3 Strategies to Increase Cyber Capacity

It is well-known that the cyber insurance market is tight, with high demand from organizations because of increasing cyberattacks and limited capacity from insurers and reinsurers hesitant to expose themselves to more risk in a turbulent cyber security environment.

Insurers are limiting their cyber insurance coverage to mitigate their own exposure to cyber risk. How can brokers and agents uncover available capacity for their clients in the market? 

Top Strategies to Secure Cyber Capacity 

Pinpoint critical questions to ask during the underwriting and quoting process

As an insurance professional, you require your client to fill out a questionnaire on their cybersecurity capabilities. 

These questions can be critical in understanding the risk to your business, as an organization with a robust cybersecurity program will be less expensive to insure than an organization that is not taking cybersecurity seriously. Pinpointing the most important initiatives, such as multi-factor authentication or business continuity programs could be a good indicator of the organization's strength. 

[FREE CHECKLIST DOWNLOAD] How to Secure Cyber Insurance Capacity

Insurers often treat organizations in different industries — generally, a bank is more of a target for hackers than a manufacturing company, for example. Understanding where the greatest risk lies and which questions to ask can help your brokerage better understand your clients’ needs and write more cyber business.  

Become a pseudo-cybersecurity expert

Even if your specialization is cyber insurance, brokers and agents typically aren’t cybersecurity experts. Learning the basics of what insurers look for during the underwriting process can help your client build out their cyber capabilities and obtain the coverage they’re looking for. 

Insurers are doing extensive research and actuarial modeling to understand cyber risk. Using the requirements and questions asked during the underwriting process, brokers and agents have visibility into what controls and initiatives are at the highest risk to a client or business and thus the insurer. Helping clients understand these requirements can help them know what risks to address in the future, help them obtain a policy, lower their premiums, and lower their overall risk and exposure to cyberattacks.

Use an insurtech platform like Relay to match clients with available capacity 

While capacity in the overall market is limited, capacity providers are still willing to do business with your client. As a broker or agent, using a platform like Relay to quickly and efficiently find the right insurer for your client is critical in this hard market. 

In a tight market, it’s crucial to give your client multiple options of coverages and premiums using Rely’s Competitive Differentiation TableTM.  Relay can help you provide these options in an aesthetically pleasing format, using the Smart Customer ProposalTM  to display quotes, showing the differences in premiums and coverage. With capacity low, insurers and reinsurers are raising premiums. For organizations seeking cyber insurance, it's essential to have different options when it comes to pricing and coverages. 

The cyber capacity issue isn’t going away anytime soon, and brokers and agents need to leverage innovative strategies to adapt. Questions? Contact Relay to learn more.