Businesses need cyber insurance - no matter how big or small they may be. That's the verdict of Emergence Insurance's US CEO Keith Savino. In this Peer to Pier interview, he looks at the state of the cyber insurance market, how AI is reshaping risk and underwriting, and what's on the agenda for the next two- to three years.
00:03 - [music] >> Hello everybody. Welcome to Insurance Business TV. We are here in Insurance Fest 2026 for another of our peer-to-peer interviews. And right now I am meeting Keith Savino. He is the CEO of Emergence Insurance. Keith, we're going to talk a little bit about cyber today if you don't mind. It seems like an obvious place to start. How do you assess the market right now? Would you say that it is hardening, softening, or somewhere in between? >> I think market is awesome.
00:39 - So, whether it's a hard market or a soft market really doesn't matter. Plus, you know, I learned years ago on the retail and the wholesale side that, you know, when if you're in a soft market and it becomes a hard market, you got to learn how to sell. If you're in a hard market and it becomes a soft market, you got to learn how to sell. So, no matter what, the answer is the same. >> Yeah. And what is the biggest gap then, would you say, when you're talking to clients and so on? What's the
01:02 - the biggest gap between what they think they're covered for and perhaps what they're actually covered for? >> Well, for one, we give it a bad name. We call it cyber. You know, it's a lot of things. It's not just that, and it makes people feel it's purely a tech play. So, I'll hear folks say all the time, you know, do I need cyber? I'm not really a technology risk. Or do I need cyber because, you know, I don't really do something in particular
01:26 - without realizing that I make the argument that 100% of every commercial account needs cyber. And I have three questions that I ask everybody to determine that. And I started this many years ago because people wondered whether or not they need it. You could be a dry cleaner down the street, or you could be a large multinational company. You have the same cyber exposure. But it's difficult for people to know that because they don't feel sophisticated. So, I'll tell you the three questions cuz they're kind of
01:52 - fun. >> Yeah. >> And this comes with a little dose of sarcasm, it has to, cuz I'm originally from New York. Uh which is uh question number one. And remember if you answer yes to any one of these questions, you need cyber insurance. Question number one. Do you have any customers? Okay, question number two. Do you have a bank account? Possibly with any money in the bank? Uh-huh. Question number three. Do you have any information on anyone anywhere? Like a former employee, a current employee, somebody who applied
02:20 - for a job, a prospect, a customer. Maybe they're in paper files that you moved to a self-storage facility the last time you downsized and nobody wants to go through those boxes, right? You're actually kind of hoping the self-storage facility burns to the ground, you know, so you never have to go through it again. Oh, also in a computer. Yeah, the point is if you answered yes to any of those, which just about every business answers yes to 100% of those, then you absolutely positively need
02:46 - cyber insurance. And the two bonus ones are um do you rely on any operational technologies? Mhm. And are you part of the 16 areas of critical infrastructure in the United States? So, bottom line is 100% of people need it, but the in the small business space only a certain percentage of clients actually have it right now. So, to answer your first question, hard market, soft market, doesn't matter because the trajectory of this line of business sets it up to be the fastest growing line of business in the insurance space
03:18 - between now and 2030 without a doubt. >> Yeah. You had me at bank account, by the way, but you ruled me out when you mentioned money had to be in it. But, uh Well, let's uh >> Well, it's an FYI, but you know, I could still do some fun things with your account number. >> [laughter] >> Even if you don't have money, I could use your account. >> Let's talk about something that is also fast growing and that is of course AI. And what's really interesting from the
03:36 - cyber perspective is it's both a an attack vendor and also a an a potential underwriting tool as well. So, just tell us how you're approaching AI in your sort of day-to-day life. >> Yeah, so from an operational perspective, AI gives uh businesses of all kinds and all sizes the opportunity to uh to add new efficiencies. They could add creativity. Um you can do development work sometimes by yourself without outsourcing it or it allows outsourced companies to deliver uh technology solutions. Really solutions.
04:10 - I hate to use the word even technology. Just business solutions to businesses faster. It speeds up time to market. If you're building technology, you can move from proof of concept and MVP to release in a much shorter period time. You still need human beings to test it, to look at it, to use it. Um you get feedback from human beings that are different. The same things we can use to improve our businesses and the same tools that we use are the same tools that threat actors can use to improve their efforts. So that means
04:41 - they're faster to market. They can attack you faster than ever before. They can scale faster than they ever were able to do before. And they can also look less like a threat. >> Yeah. >> And more like a trusted partner. So it's not like find the misspelling in that word because it was done somewhere else. Now, oh my god. Voices. Deepfakes. Um leveraging operational technologies in a bad way, not a good way. Now, it just underpins what I said before about why 100% of commercial
05:10 - accounts need a cyber policy. >> Yeah, it's incredibly how complex it's gotten. Of course, when we're looking ahead, a lot of people think AI is still kind of futuristic. Of course, it's very much with us now. But tell us what is perhaps on the agenda for the cyber insurance industry over the next two to three years. >> So a lot of folks are trying to figure out how they approach it. Do they approach AI? If you're a traditional commercial insurer, you have to look at
05:34 - whether or not you're limiting your exposure. Your policy forms and endorsements were probably created before AI was really a thing. So how do you approach the current market? Do you find yourself possibly being silent on topics? and as a result even if you never intended to cover an exposure, you may find yourself extending coverage over the exposure because you never actually excluded the exposure or addressed it. Also, you give flexibility in lawsuits for judges to find coverage when none was ever
06:04 - intended. So, every carrier, whether it's a traditional commercial lines liability policy, it could be an auto insurance carrier, whatever it is, you need to look and see what your policy forms and endorsements do. And in the states, we've got some standardized forms for from various organizations that won't name that that publish that. On the cyber space, you have carriers that work on both an admitted and a non-admitted basis and there's a certain agility that comes with non-admitted.
06:30 - Most folks know you tend to find like some of your best policy forms that respond fastest on the non-admitted side generally. So, you're going to find those carriers are coming out right now and they're saying we have affirmative wording on covering AI. You'll also see folks saying we have affirmative wording on having an exclusion. So, from the insurance perspective, they should be asking the very question that you just asked. Where does this policy stand on wording around AI?
