PERILS, the Zurich-based nat cat exposure and loss data provider, has partnered with CyberAcuView to provide an insurance database of cyber market loss data.

The booming market for US cyber insurance has a new index of insured losses to draw upon, thanks to a new partnership announced between PERILS and CyberAcuView.

cyber cover

The two companies timed their announcement for the start of the Rendezvous-de-September reinsurance event taking place in Monte Carlo.

CyberAcuView is a US-based organisation set-up by cyber insurers for the benefit of the cyber insurance market; PERILS is a Zurich-based exposure and loss data provider that primarily serves data for re/insurers’ property catastrophe business.

“That’s why I think we are a great couple,” said Luzi Hitz, CEO of PERILS. “Some 40 years ago, we were founded by leading writers of property cat. The two organisations share a similar mandate, and that both were built by the industry, for the industry.”

Named the Cyber Industry Loss Index, it will report US primary cyber market losses resulting from systemic cyber incidents.

The reporting includes events that exceed a $500m industry loss, and which affect more than one insurer and more than one policyholder, all of which is anonymised.

Loss estimates are released at the latest six months after the event end date and are updated quarterly up to a maximum of three years after the event end date.

The loss data are available for licensing for use in industry-loss-based risk transfer products such as Insurance Linked Securities and Industry Loss Warranty contracts.

The loss database will support the further development of cyber risk models over time, its cofounders emphasised.

The cyber industry losses are based upon loss data collected from US cyber insurers, collected and aggregated by CyberAcuView. Subsequent industry-level calculations are then jointly signed-off with PERILS.

Initial industry loss estimates and subsequent quarterly updates are made available to subscribers of a newly-developed PERILS Cyber Portal. PERILS also acts as the industry loss reporting agency for ILS and ILW transactions.

“We have 20 members to date that are part of CyberAcuView and we estimate that at the time to launch, we have 40-50% of the US cyber market share,” said Mark Camillo, CyberAcuView’s CEO.

“We’ve been talking with our members about this for some time. Some of our members have even put together their own [cyber insurance] bonds earlier this year, some of that for their own capacity,” Camillo said.

“One of the reasons why we partnered with PERILS was their expertise. You need to be transparent in terms of how you collect this data, and you need to be a trusted source. PERILS definitely brought this to the table with their experience, as well as the relationships, because they’ve been doing this for many years with natural catastrophe data,” he added.