5 minutes with…Neil Gurnhill, Safeonline

Neil Gurnhill talks starting out in IT, the risks of cryptocurrency and insuring online gaming activities.

Insurance News

By

Neil Gurnhill is head of digital risk and cyber/technology insurance at Safeonline, a Lloyd’s of London Brokerage. He took time out to speak with Insurance Business America about his career, the outlook for cyber risk in the US and the lighter side of working in the insurance business.

Q. How did you get your start in the insurance industry?
A. My journey to insurance was a little bit strained. I worked for 10 years in IT, building marketing websites and working in infrastructure and security.

About five years ago, I could see that websites were beginning to be hacked and a lot of people didn’t know what to do. It was having a really big impact on people’s businesses. We would meet with the client’s insurance broker and they would say they didn’t understand the risk or that the risk was intangible and couldn’t be insured.

That was a lightbulb moment. I reduced and sold my shares in a development company I was a partner in, trained to be an insurance broker and set about specializing in e-commerce.

Q. What is the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career?
A. It’s really simple—always keep your hopper full. Talk to as many people as you can about digital risk. People take a long time to purchase insurance, so you should always have a lot of deals on the table and continue to speak to new people.

Q. In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge facing insurance brokers attempting to market cyber insurance to business clients?
A. The greatest challenge at the moment is getting insurance brokers comfortable enough to discuss cyber insurance, to explain how it works, how it benefits the client and what risks they face.

There isn’t an industry where technology hasn’t revolutionized the way they operate. It can’t be ignored.

Q. And what is the biggest challenge facing the cyber insurance industry in general?
A. When you look at underwriting, the biggest risk they face is possibly being on the hook for something they have inadvertently insured and understood the scope of. Aggregation—hosting aggregation, payment gateway aggregation and coding aggregation—underwriting doesn’t have a handling on it at the moment.

Q. What industries or demographics do you see offering the most potential to brokers in terms of cyber sales?
A. I think for the next two years, the biggest places we’re seeing breaches and requests for limit increases is retail.

Financial sectors are also looking to purchase, and in the next five years, I think we’ll see a shift in cryptocurrency coming to the market. Bitcoin is not going away.

I also think activist activity from groups like Anonymous and Greenpeace will be a big focus.

Q. What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever had to arrange cover for?
A. I was once asked to insure an online game where the prize was won if someone matched the numbers of a state-run lottery.

I insured the jackpot of the online game. Isn’t that crazy?

Q. If you could have dinner with any three people, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
A. Steve Jobs—He was a visionary. I really value his ups and his downs, and the fact that one of his most creative periods was when he got fired from Apple.

Albert Einstein—I have no answer for this other than what he’s done for math, and just to speak to such a genius.

Freddy Mercury—He sings a good song , he looks a fun guy and he likes to party. I don’t know how him and Steve would get on, but it would be an interesting meal.

Q. If you weren’t in insurance, where would you be?
A. Back in technology. I’d be optimizing websites and working with other technology to make their systems more secure, quicker and faster.
 

Keep up with the latest news and events

Join our mailing list, it’s free!