Hiscox’s new coverage suite is all about innovating insurance to keep in step with its fintech clients innovating finance.
The portfolio product, unveiled this month as Hiscox FS, complements and expands on the insurer’s financial services offerings, allowing for added protection against newer non-traditional exposures like technology professional liability and cyber privacy.
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Sean Hearden, VP and financial services product head at Hiscox USA, said the new suite was developed to meet the needs of financial services clients with a unique new set of risks.
“Our initial product in the financial services space was really focused on private funds … but it became clear that there’s this whole emerging area that nobody had a really good solution for,” he explained. “None of the traditional financial services products really addressed, specifically, technology exposure, with the rise of the fintech industry.”
Hiscox could still write insurance for these new clients, but it would involve melding together a series of policies from different insurance departments.
So, Hearden said, the different teams got together and created this new suite – a suite with common language and coverages to perfectly suit the emerging fintech crowd.
“It’s a portfolio product, where there’s a general terms and conditions, and then any of a variety of coverage parts that can be added to create a fintech policy,” he said. “And cyber is one of the coverages available. When you package them all together it really is a comprehensive suite of coverage parts that are designed to work together.”
The suite isn’t solely for fintech though, Hearden said. It will actually benefit a variety of companies with multiple E&O exposures – what he termed “hybrid tech-financial services firms” – such as investment advisors that also do some tax advising, or real estate companies with an in-house property manager or developer.
Fintech is a growing industry, and it’s adapting, and innovating, and progressing at lightning speed. That’s why Hiscox saw the need to get ahead of the curve and create this insurance to keep these new companies protected as the industry explodes, he said.
“If you look at the venture capital industry investment in the fintech space, they’re investing billions of dollars every year,” Hearden noted. “It’s growing more and more. Whatever we’re seeing today is going to pale in comparison to what we see in years down the road.
“We are not the first to [offer insurance] specifically for fintech, to have a product out there, but we are the first to build it this way and expand it beyond just the ability to write fintech, but the ability to address an assortment of hybrid tech-financial services firms.”
Hearden said it’s exciting to be innovating alongside the innovative companies who need the coverage.
“It felt like a really good opportunity to innovate alongside our insureds, who are innovating every day,” he said.
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