Specialist cyber underwriting agency Emergence Insurance has upgraded its policy wording to expand coverage.
The innovative new wording, released on the 20th of August, was developed in consultation with brokers and clients and responds to the need for broader coverage as the range of cyber threats increases.
Emergence is a pioneer of cyber cover in Australia, providing protection for SMEs through to ASX-listed entities.
New and upgraded policy features include:
- Jurisdiction cover expanded to anywhere in the world, except the USA (US cover available subject to risk information and assessment)
- Business interruption time excess dropped from 24 hours to 12 hours
- Limits up to $1million for cyber theft
- Limits up to $1million for contingent business interruption from cyber events at external suppliers’ businesses
- Limits up to $100,000 for tangible property, like servers, firewalls, laptops and tablets
- Greater clarity on what’s included in IT infrastructure, irrespective of where it’s hosted globally, including cutting-edge solutions like cloud storage, licensed hardware and software, and BYO devices
- Cover for pursuit costs to third parties up to $50,000 as a reward for assistance leading to the arrest and conviction of a cyber event perpetrator
- Cover for liability incurred through an insured’s participation in a joint venture or consortium
- Cover for costs incurred for crisis management and mitigation in responding to threatened cyber attacks
- Recognition that ransoms may be paid in digital currencies, such as bitcoin
- Enhanced cover for multimedia liability.
The upgraded policy wording follows Emergence’s terrorism exclusion write back last year, which is now built into the policy.
Insured cyber events include crimeware, cyber espionage, cyber extortion, denial of service, distributed denial of service, hacking, payment card skimming, point-of-sale intrusion, web app attacks, cyber theft, or telephone phreaking perpetrated against insureds.
A key point of difference is instant access to a response team of experts who understand the importance of immediately mitigating potential threats to insureds’ businesses. The incident response and claims handling teams are based in Australia and available 24/7/365 to minimise threats, and provide support to policyholders when cyber events occur.
Emergence insureds can get policy limits up to $20 million and excesses as low as $250.
