Verisk makes waves in cyber

Verisk has this month launched a global cyber industry loss index. Under its analytics business Property Claim Services (PCS), Verisk launched PCS Global Cyber.

According to Verisk: “This new loss aggregation service provides industry loss estimates for individual affirmative worldwide cyber events with insured losses of at least $20m industrywide.”

The new cyber loss index was developed in collaboration with Capsicum Re, and was supported by many insurers and reinsurers around the world, PCS assistant vice president Tom Johansmeyer said.

He added: “Over the past year, we’ve listened closely to the insurers and reinsurers ioneering cyber coverage and included their feedback to ensure we would bring a useful and reliable loss aggregation platform to market.”

Johansmeyer said that he believed the Index could be the catalyst for an Industry Loss Warranties (ILW) market: ““We believe that the launch of this index could help grow an ILW market that could provide access to much-needed capital markets capacity and increase retrocessional activity—two key factors in growing the overall cyber insurance market worldwide.”

Capsicum Re partner Ian Newman said: “We developed the global cyber loss index with PCS based on specific feedback from the market, as well as the trends our team has identified in structuring and facilitating risk-transfer transactions.”

He continued: “It’s clear that there’s appetite for ILW trading from both buyers and sellers. The emergence of a robust cyber ILW market will be crucial to the overall growth of this class of business, as prudent risk transfer can maximize the availability of underwriting capital, and will ultimately help bring original risks to market.”