Brokers should focus on prevention in the cyber sales conversation, suggests MGA

Brokers need to change the way they sell cyber insurance and focus on preventing cyberattacks in the first place, a cyber insurance provider suggests.

A cyber claim can be terminal for a business, Vishal Kundi, CEO and co-founder of Toronto-based cybersecurity and insurance specialist BOXX Insurance, told Canadian Underwriter.

“If you think about a cyber incident as being a ‘digital iceberg,’ there’s no point in insurance saying, ‘If you hit it, we’ll be there for you.’ It’s about not hitting the iceberg in the first place,” Kundi said.

Many brokers find it increasingly difficult to sell cyber insurance and improve the customer experience, Kundi said, since cyber is “daunting to understand” for many.

“That’s why it’s important for brokers to become a lot more confident in talking about cyber to their customers. You can sell the best insurance product on the market, but what’s at stake here is the survival of your client’s business. This is an insurance claim you never want to happen,” Kundi said.

With this in mind, selling cyber needs to become about risk management and how clients can avoid claims, he added.

Brokers need to provide tools and education for clients’ staff to help them avoid cyber incidents and offer “some fancy navigating equipment in how to spot the digital iceberg and how to navigate around it,” Kundi said, referencing various security products that can spot and patch up cyber risks.

For example, his firm’s portal allows a broker to enter a client’s website address “to determine blindspots and vulnerabilities that cyberattackers may exploit,” much like a credit check.

“It really becomes meaningful in the sales process, because it also takes away the idea that cyberattacks theoretically only happen in big companies,” Kundi said. “The conversation then is not focused around selling a client a policy that will become effective once they’ve hit their digital death. Rather, it’s shifted to managing the client’s digital health and safety.”