Cyber Insurance Market Insights Q1 2021

Increased working from home arrangements have provided an opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities in organisations’ security, and as evidenced by Aon’s proprietary claims data, ransomware attacks have increased in both severity and frequency, and malware has been truly weaponised since its earlier versions.

2021 and 2022 are likely to be the first consecutive years of hardening conditions to the cyber market, with the importance of risk selection and underwriting criteria being a focus point for insurers.

Silent cyber remains a challenging issue, with cyber exclusions or endorsements being applied to most non-cyber lines of insurance. There is little consistency between markets or lines of insurance on the exact approach and there is often significant gaps between proposed endorsements/exclusions, and coverage, leading to confusion of intention.

The SolarWinds incident will also play a critical role in cyber risk and insurance over the next few years. The theft of investigative tools from a globally recognised cyber security and forensics firm is likely to lead to improved hacking tools in the hands of cyber criminals.

Looking ahead, supply chain exposure will become an additional focus for markets throughout 2021. While this has been an issue for some time, as insurers start to grapple more fully with ransomware, supply chain exposure will also be scrutinised increasingly.

Download the Cyber Insurance Market Insights report for further information.