Aon, a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions, is creating new reinsurance capacity in cyber and launching its silent cyber solution. Working with key reinsurers in Bermuda, London and Europe, Aon has already sourced $350m of capacity prior to launch.
The facility will protect insurance carriers from silent cyber exposures through reinsurance – underpinned by data and analytics from Aon’s Cyber Solutions and Guidewire – with the goal of mitigating the risk of the silent exposure in a carrier’s portfolio. Silent or non-affirmative cyber refers to potential cyber exposures contained within other lines of business that do not explicitly exclude cyber as a peril, nor expressly include cyber coverage.
Over the last 18 months, a combination of regulatory attention and high profile attacks – including reports by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), and the far-reaching ransomware attacks NotPetya and Wannacry – have raised awareness of how cyber incidents can impact multiple lines of business, Aon says in a statement.
Carriers are now under increased pressure to identify, analyse and mitigate their exposures. However, challenges include locating the exposure, and developing scenarios that are both realistic and relevant to that carrier.
In response, Aon’s silent cyber solution is designed to partner with carriers in their journey to identify, quantify and mitigate the silent cyber risk by providing a clash solution to reinsure the exposure in the interim period. Where the carrier chooses to provide affirmative cyber coverage going forward, Aon can arrange a reinsurance solution for that cyber exposure to sit across multiple lines of business.
The solution is supported by an analytical, end-to-end process to help insurers:
- identify their silent cyber exposures through wording and threat analysis
- quantify their exposures using bespoke scenarios developed by Aon’s dedicated Cyber Analytics team, insights and scenarios from cyber security specialists within Aon’s Cyber Solutions, and cyber modelling provided by partner Guidewire and its Cyence Risk Analytics product, to establish credible risk levels
- protect that silent exposure with a cyber clash reinsurance product
- going forward, establish appetite and methodology to underwrite, price and reinsure affirmative cyber across multiple lines of business.