Manifesto 2024: Biba plea for independent body to clarify cyber losses

Biba has called for the establishment of an independent body to “identify, define and categorise” cyber losses and for insurers to “support its implementation as soon as possible”.

In the association’s 2024 Manifesto: Managing risk for growth and economic security, published yesterday (10 January 2024), it highlighted that insurers’ approach to systemic risk following a cyber attack, such as the outage of a global cloud provider, was “not uniform” and “different exclusions have emerged as a result”.

Biba said consumers needed “certainty” around the insurance they purchase and that an independent body – comprising of academia, legal professionals and security analysts – would be “critical to long-term confidence” among consumers.

“[It will also] help build capacity within the (re)insurance market,” the manifesto stated.

Capital provider ‘reluctance’

The request from Biba followed Gallagher Re publishing its The Risk of a Cyber Catastrophe report on 10 October 2023, which said that the “demand for cyber insurance continues to grow”.

“While the supply of capital is increasing in parts of the market, there remains a reluctance from capital providers to offer cost-effective and systemic solutions that solve for carriers’ true fear of the unknown,” it added.

To kick its own initiative into action, Biba said it had committed to “work with specialist members and other stakeholders to improve understanding of common heads of cover that may be included in a cyber policy”.

And in return, in addition to backing from insurers, the broker body has requested for “stakeholders to support proposals”.