Emergence NZ Limited, a specialist in cyber underwriting, recently unveiled a comprehensive revision of its principal insurance product's policy wording.
The overhaul of its cyber event protection policy, known as CEP-005, coincides with the company's 2023 debut in the New Zealand insurance market.
Emergence CEO Troy Filipcevic stressed the importance of periodic updates to the policy's wording to address the swiftly changing landscape of cyber threats, thereby ensuring policyholders are adequately covered against newly emerging cyber risks.
“We're offering brokers, and their clients, additional coverage and have introduced free advisory services as part of the policy core to help insureds become better risks,” he said.
This policy update introduces enhanced coverage options and inaugurates complimentary advisory services designed to assist policyholders in improving their risk profiles. These services, delivered by the affiliate cyberSuite Pty Ltd, encompass a no-cost one-hour session with a cybersecurity expert, access to a variety of ready-made documents for incident management, continuous threat intelligence monitoring, and surveillance of the dark web.
One of the notable enhancements in the policy is the waiver of the deductible for entities reporting annual turnovers below $25 million, providing a significant advantage to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in mitigating financial losses from potential claims.
Filipcevic said the benefit derived from analysing nine years of Australian underwriting and claims data, which facilitated the streamlining of the underwriting questions to target contemporary cyber threats more accurately, without altering the company's comprehensive risk appetite.
“That makes it easier for brokers to transact and enables their clients to get quotes and coverage faster,” he said.
The policy enhancements include extended coverage for business interruption losses directly caused by cyber incidents affecting the insured's IT service providers, automatic coverage for business interruptions due to system outages, and broader coverage for expenses incurred in responding to cyber incidents within the IT or data processing operations of third-party contractors.
Moreover, the policy has elevated the sub-limit for claims under the tangible property option to match that of the cyber event response costs section and introduced an optional coverage for claims against directors and officers arising from cyber-related wrongful acts.
Emergence has also updated its broker portal to reflect these policy wording enhancements.
According to Filipcevic, these developments underscore Emergence's continuous effort to advance cyber protection awareness and improve insurance coverage standards, leveraging its team of specialists in Australia and extending its expertise to the New Zealand market.
“The policy wording reflects feedback from brokers about what their clients need. Emergence has built a dedicated team of experts across Australia, and now in New Zealand, who are raising the bar in promoting cyber protection awareness,” he said.
