Pssst.. let me share with you a story…

I remember the first time my father taught me how to ride a bike, how to shoot a basketball, and how to sell cyber insurance. Most of these firsts are classic father and son endeavors but selling cyber insurance!?

My father founded his insurance agency in 1972 and this year celebrated 50 years of insurance excellence and success. But it was only in 2016 when he started offering his small and middle market business (SMB) clients cyber insurance solutions. He was quite frustrated with the initial results as the application process was very technical and the customers did not really understand the need, how much they needed to buy or how they can get better terms.

A visit that changed everything

After I got a phone call from my father asking for help, we drove to one of the firm's clients — a small private university about 20 minutes out of town to meet with the head of IT. He did not seem happy to talk about cyber.

They were already insuring property and liability insurance through my father's agency but the CFO asked for cyber insurance after suffering not one but two (!) ransomware events within the previous 12 months. It was a very difficult moment for the university and they realized that they must find some financial protection for a possible third attack.

The cyber insurance application form was full of technical questions about firewalls, encryptions, SOC, NAC, backups, training, patch management, PII, third-party vendors, and many, many more. Multiple application pages put both the broker and the customer at a big disadvantage. Keeping in mind that this was a small educational institution, with a relatively limited IT budget, already hit by two events — the meeting, to say nicely, was challenging.

"We don't need Cyber Insurance," he suddenly told us. "I know my job and we have never seen any data stolen, only ransomware."

Clearly he did not understand the potential financial impact an additional cyber attack may have on his business, including financial fines, third-party lawsuits, data restoration costs, notification costs, and more.

Lessons learned

First, SMBs generally have no knowledge regarding the cyber risks posed to their businesses, how to deal with them or how much they could actually cost them. Second, very few insurance brokers are cyber experts, and they need a tool to help them mitigate this gap to be able to effectively convey cyber to their customers.

I remember going back to my office and thinking how different the cyber risk management environment is for an SMB compared to a corporate cyber security department. There needs to be a way to explain cyber risk with a simple report, in a way that would make visual sense and resonate with both brokers AND customers. A tool that should enable the broker to propose an appropriate coverage level and help the customer understand why they need it.

That thinking was the seed that grew into Cyberwrite — a platform that generates a complete, client-ready cyber risk report in under 60 seconds, in plain language, backed by AI trained on real claims data. So that no broker ever has to leave a meeting like that one empty-handed again.