More than half of all Americans have already had their personal information compromised in a cyber incident. Kareen Boyadjian (pictured), vice president of cyber underwriting at Tokio Marine HCC – Cyber & Professional Lines Group (CPLG), a member of the Tokio Marine HCC group of companies based in Houston, Texas, believes the insurance industry can no longer ignore the issue. In her view, personal cyber coverage has matured well beyond the add-on territory where it has lived for years, and both brokers and their clients need to catch up.
Voluntary wire transfer fraud is the single largest driver of personal cyber claims by both frequency and severity, and it can affect anyone. One of the most persistent misconceptions is that cyber risk affects only the high net worth (HNW) clients or deep pocketed companies. Boyadjian is direct on this point: it is not. But the stakes are markedly higher for wealthy clients, and the mechanics of why reveal something important for brokers placing private client business.
"The majority of their assets, bank accounts and cryptocurrency platforms are online. They also typically have a team of people managing those assets, so their exposure is only as low or as high as the weakest link in that circle of trust," she explained. For standard policyholders, control is more direct. For HNW individuals, it is distributed, and that distribution creates vulnerability.”
The speed with which money can move between financial platforms compounds that vulnerability. Wire transfer fraud, extortion, and impersonation scams are all accelerating - and impersonation scams, Boyadjian notes, are "one of the fastest growing areas of cyber exposure in the personal lines world."
Beyond wire fraud, Boyadjian identifies the other two most common claim drivers as extortion and cyberbullying. One in three computers in the US already carry a malicious virus feeding data to remote hosts, she says - information that criminal groups use to demand payment, with or without any intention to follow through. Cyberbullying is increasing in tandem with expanded access to social platforms and AI-powered tools.
The client's demographic shapes the attack vector. Elderly clients are being targeted by AI-generated phone scams, calls placed in the early hours of the morning, impersonating grandchildren in distress, and demanding emergency funds. Younger clients, by contrast, face social media and cyberbullying exposure. These are fundamentally different threat profiles, and effective coverage begins with recognizing those distinctions.
Financial advisors, Boyadjian argues, sit at a critical juncture in this exposure chain. “So much of this comes down to education at all levels, especially for financial advisors and wealth managers, because they are managing a great deal of that communication,” she said. She frames the product not as a technical insurance offering but as wealth preservation; a category that advisors already engage with through estate planning and digital hygiene conversations. Personal cyber, in that frame, is a natural extension.
For years, personal cyber has occupied a secondary position appended to homeowner policies, or occasionally tacked onto D&O or E&O coverage for C-suite individuals. Boyadjian believes that structural arrangement is nearing its limits.
“The threat landscape has changed dramatically. The sophistication, the scale, the personalization of attacks, it has evolved far beyond what any endorsement was designed to address,” she said. Artificial intelligence has significantly accelerated that trajectory, making scams more scalable, more convincing, and far more organized. Bolt-on coverage, by its nature, cannot evolve at the speed these threats demand.
A standalone solution changes the equation in two ways. First, it places cyber risk at the center of a policy rather than a line item after property, liability, and other coverages, forcing the exposure to be underwritten and managed with appropriate depth. Second, it enables insurers to bundle in resources such as proactive monitoring, cyber incident response, and dedicated expertise. Those services, Boyadjian argues, are what transforms a claims-paying mechanism into a genuine risk management tool.
The conversation around personal cyber can no longer be deferred to a checkbox at renewal. “This is not a product category that is going to get simpler or slower,” Boyadjian said. “The advisors and brokers who get ahead of it now will be the ones their clients trust when something goes wrong.” In a market where the frequency and severity of personal cyber incidents continues to climb, standalone coverage is not a premium product for the few, it is fast becoming a foundational one for anyone with a digital footprint worth protecting.
