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Assured Reacts 09.07.2024

Assured Reacts: Howden Insurance Report Shows Double-Digit Decline in Cyber Premiums

Author: Eleanor Dallaway

What happened?

Generalist insurance brokerage Howden released its 2024 cyber insurance report late in June. Highlights from the report include:

  • Cyber insurance premiums are falling globally, with the cyber insurance market witnessing double-digit price reductions
  • Greater appetite from insurers has led to double-digit price decreases despite cyber attacks and ransomware rising
  • Standalone cyber insurance policies accounted for the vast majority (68%) of the market last year
  • Insurers are increasingly demanding measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA), backups, security awareness training, and endpoint detection and response (EDR) as a pre-requisite for offering premiums

When can you read the full report?

Download the full report here: https://www.howdengroupholdings.com/reports/2024-cyber-report

What did Sarah Neild, head of cyber retail at Howden, have to say?

“At no other point has the market experienced the current mix of conditions: a heightened threat landscape combined with a stable insurance market underpinned by robust risk controls. The foundations for a mature cyber market, with innovation and exposure-led growth at its core, are now in place.”

What’s Assured’s take?

We agree that cyber insurance products are consistently getting better, as are organisations’ security postures.

In our opinion, the focus on the threat of generative AI and systemic risk is scaremongering that overshadows the day-to-day threats businesses face in defending against cybercrime.

Systemic risk is a legitimate risk, but in reality, the underwriters and brokers on the ground are rightly more concerned with the controls that defend the insured against more standard and frequent attacks, including email security, endpoint protection and detection and monitoring capabilities, for example.

Discussing the rise of generative AI to increase the sophistication of state-backed threat actors and, thus, the severity and frequency of claims feels like clickbait. We do not see this in our claims. The majority of claims in the UK are ransomware and business email compromise. The same methods of attacks that get through the same lapse in defences produce results for hackers.

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