Wawanesa Mutual Insurance will next month launch a new slate of cyber protection insurance products for Canadian homeowners and home-based businesses, the firm has announced.
“Cyber-crime is not only increasing, it’s getting much harder to stop,” said Keith Hartry, Wawanesa’s chief operating officer. “And Canadians are looking for solutions that protect them and ultimately provide peace of mind. And that’s what our portfolio is built to do.”
The move means Wawanesa will be one of the first major insurance companies in Canada to offer a personal cyber product on a mass market basis.
The portfolio includes protection for:
- Cyberattack: recovery of data and restoration of systems that have been lost or damaged;
- Cyber extortion: payments and assistance in responding to demands to damage, disable, deny access to or disseminate content from devices, systems or data;
- Online fraud: coverage for scams that result in a direct financial loss to the policyholder and;
- Data breach: payment for services if third-party private person data entrusted to a household resident is breached.
“As the world becomes more interconnected and criminals become both more invasive and sophisticated, we’re ready to safe-guard anyone who operates a connected home device, stores information electronically and accesses data online,” said Hartry.
According to a report from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce released this year, “the number of businesses reporting a loss or exposure of sensitive data … has increased every year for the past three years and 8% overall.”
“[A]long with the proliferation of attacks, the scale of losses has also increased. The number of businesses reporting a $1 million-plus loss has risen to 7% from just 1% two years ago,” it said.
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