Karine Cherfane

Ms. Karine Cherfane, Premium Broking House’s Executive Director, explains the importance of Cyber insurance, and emphasizes on the ability of her company to meet the growing demand of the market with the support of their A rated international Reinsurers. She also talks about Premium’s other projects in Cyprus and their plans for more exposure in the Eastern Europe market.

* Why you’ve chosen to launch your Cyber insurance product at this period of time?

The coronavirus outbreak has resulted in the largest work-from-home situation in history creating new opportunities for hackers and criminals to exploit any security vulnerabilities and increasing Cyber-attacks tremendously around the world.

The sophisticated hackings that occurred on several Institutions around the world have led the market to develop quickly and urged Reinsurers to find imminent solution for coverage on such increased threats. CYPBER INSURANCE is a very specialized and sophisticated product from an underwriting point of view and we are happy to launch our “Cyber Insurance” unit for our both European Company PREMIUM FRANCE in France and in Cyprus and PREMIUM BROKING HOUSE for the MENA region.

* What are CYBER INSURANCE coverages? Who would require such coverages? And how about the rules and regulations surrounding such new product?

– The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulatory) that is now imposed by the European Union obliges any institution to protect the privacy of their client’s data and in case that was exposed by any means to Cyber-attack, they should inform their customers within 72 hours or so, for which in case that was not respected would be subject to a penalty up to Euro 10M. This would certainly require any businesses to acquire a CYBER INSURANCE coverage and this law is being studied to be imposed in all territories around the world.

– Eventually, everybody would require such coverage in the future; however, one of the main industries that require CYBER INSURANCE would be Airports, Hospitals & Medical Centers, Banks & Financial Institutions, Hotels, Governmental Entities, Factories, Universities, IT companies & Media Agencies etc.

One of the major coverages that CYBER INSURANCE provides is for: “Cyber Crime”, “Phishing”, “Media Liability”, “Disaster Recovery Plan” and that is related to major institutions; however, there are events around the world that also requires CYBER Insurance protection in place such as the “FIFA World Cup”, “Olympic Games” where they would usually be exposed to more than 1,000 Cyber-attacks every day on their daily operations.

* What about your capacity to reinsure this kind of products?

The largest market for CYBER INSURANCE is certainly the US market followed by the EU market in the last 5 years after the major institutions as the Auto industries were attacked, and certainly comes the Southeast Asian market. Although, the MENA region market is still limited but it is developing very quickly, and we are succeeding to place the business with A rated international Reinsurers who are well equipped to serve our clients in case of claim. The major obstacle in CYBER insurance is the underwriting phase, as the client may require an IT specialist to complete the proposal form and provide the full underwriting information required.

* The Cyber insurance gained a lot of importance, especially with the fact that most of the companies are working remotely…

Working remotely has definitely increased awareness and demand for “Cyber Insurance”, putting cyber security under new levels of stress and pushing Companies to buy “Cyber Insurance” coverage to protect mainly their institutions.

* Do you expect to have high demand on this product?

We are already receiving a large number of enquiries on this Product for several years now, from several Countries in the region and we are succeeding to assist our Clients with very specialized market with reputable Reinsurers and we do believe that this Insurance will be popularized and will be sold easily for Individuals through online platforms

* What are your other future plans?

As you already know, we have launched “Premium France” in Cyprus and we are developing our exposure there and to Eastern Europe on all lines of business, on both Facultative and Treaty side.