ABI calls for cyber breach data to be publicly available as claims payout rates hit 99%

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has revealed that 99% of 207 claims made on its members cyber insurance policies in 2018 were paid.

It is one of the highest claims acceptance rates across all insurance products.

James Dalton, the ABI’s director of general insurance policy, said that “the claims acceptance rates speak for themselves” in terms of cyber insurance being a valuable product.

The ABI has now asked the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to make anonymised cyber breach data publicly available.

This is in order to price risk more accurately and manage exposure effectively by using this data to feed into their modelling.

The inability to access raw breach data risks is limiting the potential of the market and it is therefore impeding the UK in becoming a “world leader in cyber insurance”, the ABI said.

The ICO has yet to agree but the ABI said it will continue to work with them to find a solution that enables both innovation and data privacy in the cyber market.

It follows recent high-profile cases such as the Marriott and BA data breach highlighting how important it is to take preventative measures in the face of hackers.

Businesses at risk

Despite the rise in claims, the uptake of cyber insurance overall for UK businesses is still “worryingly low” with just 11% having a specific policy in place meaning that potentially 89% are unprotected, according to the ABI.

With an overall market size for cyber estimated at less than a tenth of the size of the country’s pet insurance market.

Dalton explained that the additional support a business receives beyond dealing with the pure financial losses is a “key attribute” of most cyber insurance policies that is too often overlooked.

“Data is key to insurers’ ability to better understand and more accurately price cyber risk. We need the ICO to work with us to find what data can be shared to help insurers provide more cover to the many businesses that need it in this digital age,” he said.