Ask a cyber liability expert to describe the market and you’re likely to hear words like “dynamic, “revolutionary,” “innovative”—even “radical.” And they wouldn’t be wrong. The cyber market has grown as a result of the agility and creativity of all participants in responding to client demand.
Executive Summary
As cyber insurers expand their offerings to cover physical consequences of cyber events and as traditional property insurance policies evolve to respond to cyber events that threaten physical assets, questions about whether cyber is a product or a peril are increasing. Here, JLT Specialty USA's Shannon Groeber outlines the limitations and advantages of both views and suggests that insureds will ultimately benefit from the broadening appetites of both the property and cyber underwriters.But the standalone cyber market isn’t alone in that agility. Other “traditional” products have been expanding appetite and terms to recognize the global shift toward connectivity and vulnerability to debilitating cyber attacks. Reinsurance markets are the silent—though becoming more vocal—backbone of the industry. The support of the reinsurance market has been critical in facilitating innovation while also forcing a level of analysis that hadn’t been possible in the early days of cyber insurance. All of this is to the buyer’s benefit until the patchwork of coverage in various policies becomes disadvantageous to the entire ecosystem.
