Tokio Marine Kiln unveils flagship cyber product at SIRC 2019

There is plenty of opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region for Tokio Marine Kiln (TMK), the issue is accessing the right opportunities, in the right fashion.

That was the perspective shared with SIRC Today by Alex Dugand, regional managing director for Asia at TMK.

“Our approach to the business in this part of the world is all about having best-in-class services. We differentiate from a services standpoint with underwriters who are able to have an in-depth conversation with brokers and cedants to understand the risks they are facing and put an appropriate product in place,” he said.

He called it a flexible approach to finding solutions, adding that the business does not parachute products into Asia from other parts of the world.

Dugand highlighted the launch of the firm’s Cyber Ctrl in Asia on October 30 at SIRC 2019, as “a great example of that”, explaining that it is a flagship “policy enhancement” product targeted at insurers in Asia.

Cyber Ctrl covers a range of first-party losses including business interruption and provides clients with crisis management support in the wake of a breach. Traditional liability covers to protect against breaches of third-party data are included as standard.
The enhancement will be reinsured by TMK through its office in Singapore.

Dugand said: “What we are focusing on here is the business interruption exposures that our clients are facing. It’s first-party losses. We are covering the third-party liabilities but our view is that those are not as central to businesses in this part of the world, simply because of the regulatory environment they are operating in.”

Asia does not have the US notification exposures that arise from regulations in the country, nor exposure from the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe.

“We are simply talking about the day-to-day exposures our clients will face, such as ransomware,” Dugand explained.

“Research we’ve done with some of our key partners in the region has led us to understand that around 50 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises in Asia have experienced a cyber breach.

“There are reasonable costs associated with that. Put simply, it is outage and the inability to conduct business as they would have previously. So it’s about providing that solution to market,” he concluded.