Due to the difficulty to access the risk, Brian Duperreault, CEO of Hamilton Insurance Group, has announced that Hamilton is not currently covering cyber-attacks, explaining, “At Hamilton, we’re taking a cautious position on cyber.” While speaking at the AM Best Annual conference, hosted by the ratings agency in Scottsdale, Ariz., Duperreault made clear that “We’re not writing it as a class until we’ve identified an approach that gives us comfort. We haven’t found one yet, mainly because there’s been a tendency to underestimate the interconnectedness of cyber risk.”
While the industry is still in its infancy, being “smart about data” will help the cyber insurance sector predict emerging risks and will allow for more precise underwriting in the future. For the industry at large, recent innovations, including telematics, wearable technology and sensory data, has led to higher profits, better targeting and revolutionized claims handling. The accumulation of such voluminous data, once understood, will eventually help eliminate bias in the underwriting process (for the broker?), leading to more precise and comprehensive policies. As Duperreault explains, “The role of the broker and agent has been evolving for years but data analytics is one of the greatest threats – or opportunities – for the partners who help us develop and distribute our products.”