It was about a year ago that Troy Filipcevic (pictured) started pondering the prospect of expanding his Australia-headquartered cyber underwriting agency Emergence Insurance into New Zealand. Now Emergence NZ is open for business, with the group boss making sure there are no missteps.
“[High on the agenda is] making sure that we get it right and that we actually do what we’ve promised the market to do,” the chief executive told Insurance Business. “And we want to help grow the cyber insurance market by raising more awareness; we’re very dedicated in that space.
“We’ve invested to put people on the ground there… We’re doing it properly. So, the priority is basically getting that right and making sure that we’re providing good solutions and support to brokers.”
As a specialist agency, Emergence looks to offer “something different to the market that they’ll take notice of,” Filipcevic said.
He highlighted: “Firstly, Emergence is an underwriting agency that’s 100% focussed on cyber, so that’s one point of difference. We bring a lot of capacity to the market. One of the things that we’re hearing from brokers in New Zealand was that they were struggling to actually find insurance for their clients. If the client wanted insurance, they just couldn’t find enough capacity for it.
“And a lot of the market in New Zealand, their cyber gets bundled up with the rest of their insurance products. Whereas for us, we just do cyber… The benefit of providing a standalone cyber policy is that it is more likely it provides broader cover than something that’s packaged and included in other lines of business. That’s the big benefit. It actually provides full, comprehensive cover.”
Additionally, Emergence has an in-house 24/7 help desk and a quote and bind platform for brokers.
“We have claims handling capability and incident response,” Filipcevic noted. “So, they’ll get access to that. And we have a full range of vendors that are on the ground in New Zealand that help clients get back on their feet after they have a cyberattack.
“We also have a full policy lifecycle technology solution that allows brokers to quote and bind risks themselves. And risk appetite is very broad, which is something else that we’re bringing to the market.”
According to the CEO, the portal is now live and New Zealand brokers are currently doing business on it.
Alongside the opportunity in the market, meanwhile, is the challenge of educating both brokers and their clients.
“Education is a massive piece,” Filipcevic told Insurance Business. “Education – there’s two ways. So, one, the brokers constantly need to be educated and updated on the emerging risk of cyber, and then clients need to fully understand what the actual risk is to their business.
“Yes, clients and brokers are reading all about the major attacks that are happening, so it is providing a little bit of awareness, but [there’s a lot of misconception]. There’s a lot of misconception from the smaller businesses that [hackers] are only attacking the bigger end of town. Whereas, in our experience, it’s the SMEs that are the most vulnerable to these attacks.
“The large corporates – they have cybersecurity teams in-house; SMEs don’t have any support whatsoever. And that’s the beauty of a cyber insurance policy, is that it actually gives them access to cyber experts.”
Filipcevic believes that entering the Kiwi cyber insurance market will not only provide brokers another option for their clients, but also give brokers expertise in the space.
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