Australian brokers can now look up which insurers write cyber cover, what they will accept and who to contact through a free platform built by insurtech Lyra. Ten insurers had published profiles at launch, each covering appetite by industry and client size, incident response arrangements, vendor panels and submission routes. Some have also uploaded wordings and proposal forms. Brokers can filter by a client’s profile, compare insurers side by side and register with a work email address.
Insurers with profiles at launch include Agile, AXA XL, CFC, Coalition, Cylo, DUAL, Emergence and Nova. The announcement did not name the other two.
The platform is aimed at brokers who do not handle cyber every day. Founder and chief executive Jennie Reed estimates there are around 50 specialist cyber brokers among roughly 15,000 nationally - a figure consistent with the 14,264 member brokers and authorised representatives counted by the National Insurance Brokers Association.
Reed said no reliable list had existed of who writes cyber in Australia, let alone what each insurer would accept. Robyn Adcock, national placement manager for cyber and technology at Gallagher, said having appetite and coverage information in one place could help generalist brokers build confidence and have better conversations with clients.
Self-published profiles carry an inherent limitation. Appetite statements written by insurers are partly a sales document, and the announcement does not say whether Lyra verifies profiles against what underwriters actually quote. The gap between published appetite and actual binding behaviour is familiar territory for anyone who has placed a risk on the strength of a market’s stated position and found the terms did not follow.
Breadth is the second issue. Ten insurers is a starting point, but Lyra’s own premise is that nobody has an accurate count of local cyber writers. That makes it difficult for a broker to know how much of the market is absent. Anyone placing risk will still need to approach markets that are not yet listed.
The business model is the third. Access is free and insurers do not pay to appear. Lyra is separately piloting a broker workspace with a small group of brokerages covering preparation, placement and post-placement work. The announcement does not say whether that will be a paid product.
Easier market research tackles only part of the reason cyber cover is hard to sell. Australian cyber insurance is now consistently profitable, yet the Insurance Council of Australia estimates that only about one in five SMEs holds a policy. The bigger obstacle, as Adelaide cyber broker Andrew Brett told Insurance Business in August, is client inertia rather than confusion about the product.
The exposure keeps growing. The Australian Signals Directorate’s Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024-25 put the average self-reported cost of cybercrime for a small business at $56,600, up 14% year on year. For a medium business the figure was $97,200.
For a generalist broker, knowing quickly which insurers will consider a small accounting practice or a regional manufacturer removes one friction in the renewal conversation. It does nothing, on its own, to change the client’s answer.
Whether the platform proves useful in practice will depend on two things: how many of the remaining cyber markets sign up, and how closely the published profiles reflect what underwriters will actually write. If both hold, generalist brokers gain a cheaper way into a line that most of them still leave to a few dozen specialists. If either falls short, it becomes another resource to cross-check rather than rely on.
