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says. “The challenge that we have, and one of the parts of my job that I most enjoy, is being able to work with a team to educate customers on their exposures and provide risk management advice on how to avoid them in the first place.” The education piece is becoming increasingly critical as more companies fall victim to hacks, breaches and ransomware. The 2018 Travelers Risk Index reveals that cyber remains the second highest risk concern among businesses overall. One in five businesses has experienced a data breach or a
2000s the impact that cyber events would eventually have on businesses and individuals, there’s no crystal ball to reveal what the market will look like in another decade. “[We need] a healthy dose of understanding of what might be over the horizon, in terms of threats that we might not be aware of or might not even anticipate that, in the next year or two or five, might be impacting our customers,” Francis says. “While cyber insurance solutions change and evolve rapidly, it’s a constant challenge for insurance solutions to adapt at the same pace that cyber vulnerabili-
“While cyber insurance solutions change and evolve rapidly, it’s a constant challenge for insurance solutions to adapt at the same pace that cyber vulnerabilities manifest and affect our customers” cyber attack – double the percentage that reported suffering a cyber incident in 2015. Yet despite the fact that 52% of the 1,200 business leaders Travelers surveyed believe a cyber attack is inevitable, half of respondents indicated that they haven’t purchased cyber insurance. “I was actually floored that only half said they don’t buy, so I think that’s certainly a positive trend,” Francis says. “I think there is still work to be done as an industry to educate agents, brokers and ultimately customers on the value of cyber insurance. We need to let them know that it’s moved far beyond just the data breach and privacy scenarios. Cyber coverage can provide a host of other solutions and services – that’s still low-hanging fruit in terms of helping the industry grow even more.”
An unknowable future Just as it was difficult to foresee in the early
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ties manifest and affect our customers.” Travelers’ strategy involves bringing together key players to ensure that the insurer is prepared for whatever might affect its customers as the threat landscape evolves. “As we think about the value proposition that we bring to customers, it’s not just – and sometimes not even mostly – about the coverage itself,” Francis says. “It’s got to be the right coverage for that customer, but it also has to be matched up with expert claim handling capability, and we’ve got a dedicated claims team that does nothing but manage cyber claims. When there’s a cyber event, we need to deploy experts in cybersecurity to do forensic investigations in terms of what happened – was data compromised; is data being extorted; can we retrieve that data – and there’s a whole industry and network of specialists that we have access to that are critical to providing a solution to our customers.”
TRAVELERS BY THE NUMBERS
1864
Year Travelers was founded by Hartford businessman James G. Batterson to fill a need for accident insurance in the US
17
Travelers’ insurance ‘firsts,’ including being the first to offer aircraft liability insurance in 1919 and the first to offer a discount nationally to hybrid vehicle drivers in 2006
5
Countries where Travelers has a presence: the US, Canada, UK, Ireland and Brazil
30,000
Approximate number of Travelers employees
13,500
Number of independent agents and brokers Travelers works with
$29 billion
Travelers’ approximate revenue in 2017
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