It's 3am. Your systems are down, your data is gone and somewhere on the dark web a countdown clock is ticking. You contact your insurer - and get put through to an automated system. It’s a living nightmare - for all too many businesses this isn't a worst-case scenario, it’s their reality.
And it’s exactly the kind of experience that BOXX Insurance is on a mission to change.
In a recent interview with Insurance Business, Neal Jardine, COO at BOXX Insurance, revealed that it’s their human-tech partnership that sets BOXX’s strategy apart from the Cyber MGA crowd.
“It’s about having a balance between automation and human support. With cyber you need automation to help accelerate claims but at the same time you need a trusted human who can talk you through anything that's confusing.
“Automation provides speed but humans provide trust. It's about having a real person there to provide the assistance, the empathy and the strategy for approaching the claim. From there, you add the automation for the data intake, the triaging, the responses and the updates that the clients need in order to resolve the issue.”
Consider this - your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, who do you call? Because when something goes wrong on the road, you don't want a voicemail. You want someone there, immediately, who knows what they're doing - cybersecurity is just the same. And Marcus Fluellon, cybersecurity lead at BOXX, agrees adding that it’s this mindset that ultimately led to the formation of BOXX’s Hackbusters Team - an in-house, 24/7 incident response team specializing in identifying, neutralizing, and recovering from cyberattacks for small-to-medium businesses and individuals.
“The Hackbusters Team provides that trust and guidance to clients, so they know they’re not alone in this. It's not just them dealing with the insurance manager or anything like that, we’re here to assist on the technical side and walk them through that process, especially if they might not have access to those resources on their own.”
Client expectations around payout speeds have also shifted, with people now expecting responses to play out in real-time. Something which Jardine says is perfectly reasonable in today’s landscape.
“Say your house burns down; in order to rebuild your house you need to apply for a building permit, you need to remove the debris, there’s a lot of actions to mobilize. In the digital world, you're not waiting for lumber or bricks or mortar - you're dealing with software and gigabytes meaning you can rebuild as fast as you want. Your only limitation is the speed at which the data gets processed. Cyber incidents move in minutes, you need your claims process to move just as fast.”
In other words, cyber insurance shouldn't feel like waiting for a builder. It should feel like roadside assistance - immediate, expert, and already pulling up to the kerb.
Aside from response times and payout speeds, there’s one other friction point that’s rubbing clients up the wrong way - slow vendor engagement. As Jardine told IB, customers hate the delays between an event occurring and the response from the external vendor, which is why BOXX deals with everything in-house.
“Our forensics teams and Hackbusters are both internal meaning there’s no lag. You're not having to make a client wait while you engage with a vendor, there’s an expert already [at hand]. We meet clients on a daily basis in order to help get ahead of any incidents. We want them to know that they can always reach us, even if something small has happened. We're there to help them - it’s all included in their policy that they have access to us at any time.”
Part of that relationship between BOXX and their client hinges on knowing the person they’re reaching out to. When the worst happens, people want to speak to someone they trust – not a faceless machine.
“Our clients have a level of familiarity, trust and comfort with us,” added Fluellon. “That means they’re going to trust what we suggest and provide too.”
Jardine concurred, going further adding that traditionally cyber insurance only really turned up at invoice submission time. It was a transactional, surface-level relationship that didn’t go far enough in building any trust.
“At BOXX, we’re moving from claims handling to that instant response and loss prevention,” he explained. “Then, if something does happen, the client already knows us. Our team hosts webinars, they write articles, they’re all out there talking with brokers and building relationships.”
At BOXX, they’re actively adapting their claims handling approach here in order to reduce client frustration and authentically improve the incident response experience. It’s an ongoing process, built on broker feedback and consideration of market trends.
“If you’re a BOXX member and have a policy with us, we are your roadside assistance,” added Jardine. “And, if you’re one of our brokers and one of your clients doesn’t have a cyber policy with BOXX, we’re still your roadside assistance. We’re that emergency response - we’re not just paperwork, we’re not just a policy, we’re your end-to-end cyber solution.”
This article was created in partnership with BOXX Insurance
