By: Elizabeth Blosfield | March 8, 2021

The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has issued new guidance for New York-regulated property/casualty insurers that write cyber insurance. This serves as the first guidance the regulator has issued on cyber insurance in particular.

“Cybersecurity is the biggest risk for government and industry, bar none,” said DFS Superintendent Linda Lacewell in a press release issued by her office.

As part of the guidance, called the Cyber Insurance Risk Framework, DFS is calling on regulated insurers to establish a formal strategy, approved by the insurer’s board or other governing entity, for measuring cyber risk based on the insurer’s size, resources and geographic distribution, among other factors.

In particular, insurers are urged to take measures to manage and eliminate exposure to silent cyber risk, which occurs when cyber exposures exist within a traditional property and liability policy that does not specifically include or exclude cyber risk.… read more > “New York Regulator Issues Guidance for Insurers Writing Cyber Policies in the State”

AIR Worldwide has updated its hurricane and wildfire models to get more granular insight on long-term climate risk.

By: John Hintze | April 20, 2021

As it builds out a framework to model future climate risk, AIR Worldwide made changes last year to its hurricane and U.S. wildfire models with the goal of providing insurers and their clients with more accurate assessments of those morphing risks.

The catastrophe (CAT) modeling firm described in detail last June its longer-term project, which began three years ago and blends its “traditional hybrid, physical, and statistical approaches with a new set of tools that come from the world of artificial intelligence — specifically machine learning.” AIR anticipates the new framework will provide insight into “not only today’s new climate questions, but also tomorrow’s.”

There is “huge demand” from insurers and across industries to quantify the impact of climate change in the near, medium and long term, according to Liz Henderson, senior managing director of analytics at Aon.… read more > “Updated Climate Change Risk Models Are Giving Insureds and Underwriters a Better Chance to Defend and Restore Property”