With hacking and the need to protect data growing every day, another major insurer has joined the cyber race after Allianz announced the launch of its first product aimed at small-to-medium sized manufacturers in Germany.
In launching the product, Christopher Lohmann, head of Central and Eastern Europe at Allianz Global Corporate and Speciality, made a bold prediction about the future of the product in an interview with Reuters – stating that demand will be rapid despite a slow start with less than one in 10 firms having taken out a cyber insurance policy in Europe to date.
“There are many reasons to believe that cyber insurance will evolve into the fire insurance of the 21st century,” he said, commenting that a functioning IT system and secure data are critical to many businesses and their reputations.
Germany is seen as a particularly rich market for cyber insurance as it is home to so many world champion manufacturers. Attacks on industrial production sites are on the increase with 40% of German companies affected by e-crime during the last two years, according to a KMPG study.
Speaking to Reuters, Peter Grass from the German Association of Insurers, outlined that cyber insurance is likely to become a matter of course for all companies whose business models depend on IT.
“The development is relatively rapid - also because the public and politics are becoming ever more aware that this can be an economic problem,” he said.
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