Lloyd’s cyber mandate leads to ‘PR disaster’ and ‘fever panic’ – CFC CEO

The issuance of Lloyd’s state electronic mandate last August swelled into a “public relations disaster” after a barrage of negative coverage and the insurance industry must learn lessons in communication, the chief executive of the General Agent’s General Administration (MGA) CFC, which has Lloyd’s syndicate, said.

“It was an absolute PR disaster, it killed me,” Newman said in response to a question posed by him. Business insurance At the 2023 CFC Summit in Chicago on May 18, 2023.

Newman described the fallout from the mandate as a “frenzied panic”, likely spurred on by the conflict that erupted in Europe with the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian War, despite the terms and intent that had been working with Lloyd’s Market Association for three years.

Last year, Lloyd unveiled proposed model clauses and a mandate, effective as of the end of March 2023, for its participants to exclude certain state-supported attacks and casualties that are detrimental to the state and caused by war, prompting broker and customer concerns, confusion, and consequences. in a flurry of what were billed during the CFC event as negative headlines.

“I’ve never seen worse communications in my life,” Newman said of the aftermath of the release of the mandate. “I would say in the insurance industry we don’t look great on PR, and I think that’s something we all have to work on.

“Just as insurance companies, we have to take a lot of the blame out there to get the messages right.”

Countering the “digital equivalent of a nuclear strike” – CFC guarantor in Lloyd’s electronic mandate

Neumann’s comments came during a question-and-answer session at an MGA broker event in the US, and followed a presentation from CFC’s electronic insurance underwriter, Beth Granger, where hundreds of attendees heard the changes were not a reaction or an attempt to completely shut down the walls on state subsidies. . The cyberattacks, rather in response to ongoing incidents dating back to 2014 in which Russia targeted Ukrainian infrastructure. Such attacks shed light on what might be possible if cyberwarfare was used to paralyze countries.

In an effort to address the specter of systemic cyber risk, the clauses drawn up by lawyers for Lloyd’s participants and the ensuing mandate were an effort to ensure “carriers are excluded from losses to state actors that were so catastrophic in nature that they destroyed state capacity,” Granger said.

In layman’s terms, this should be the “digital equivalent of a nuclear strike,” Granger said, an event so large it would not be covered by any other standard insurance policy.

The e-insurance agent targeted “dozens of negative headlines” that had arisen from the changes.

“Be very clear, online insurers will continue to cover nation-state attacks as they have for decades,” Granger said. “It is important to clarify that this is not a new exception – we are simply changing, evolving and bringing language into the modern world.

“It is truly a shame to see a change in our market that is primarily positive for policyholders portrayed so negatively because it is so misrepresented in the press and there is so much confusion in our market.”

The company says cyberspace remains a “priority area” for Lloyd’s next mandate

Lloyd’s declined to comment explicitly on what was said about the communications at the CFC event. However, a Lloyd spokesperson said that the Internet “remains a priority area for Lloyd and we will continue to take a pragmatic and innovative approach to support the growth of Lloyd’s Internet.”

“Advisory guidance provided in August 2022 ensures that we responsibly manage risks on behalf of clients – including potential systemic risks – while approaching this complex area with the expertise and diligence it takes,” said the spokesperson. “Our response ensures that we maintain an adequate capital market for manageable events, while providing clarity to clients on emerging political risks.”

The spokesperson said that rather than applying a “one-size-fits-all” approach, the updated guidance is intended to encourage its managing agents to “recognize and apply the specific complexities of state-sponsored cyberattacks, which present potential systemic risks to customers and our marketplace.”

The spokesperson reaffirmed Lloyd’s commitment to the changes, and said the company “did not take this decision lightly”.

“It is not a blanket exclusion, but a dismissal of risks in a rapidly maturing insurance field,” the spokesperson said. “There are a number of insurance teams working on product development at Lloyd’s Lab to satisfy demand for this cap while managing risk with appropriate capitalization and pricing to reflect volatility.”