Category Archives: Terrorism

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Tom Ridge Tells Cyber Conference Insurance Should Incentivize Risk and Resilience Planning

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tom ridge advisen cyber risk conference

More Americans worry about being hacked than they are of mugging, burglary, sexual assault, murder, or physical harm of a child, according to a new Gallup poll. While hacking concerns did increase with household income, they impacted a majority of Americans in every income and age bracket, while no other form of violent crime surpassed 45% of those polled.

A new survey from Advisen and Zurich found that this fear is nearly universal for companies as well. Across industries, 88% of businesses view cyber as at least a moderate risk – up to 93% among larger businesses and 81% among small. Despite this widespread recognition, however, fewer businesses have a breach response in place than just a year ago. In 2014, only 62% have a response place – a 10% decrease from 2013. Yet 66% now use cloud services, presenting a 20% jump from last year.

“Clearly, security concerns are being outweighed by the benefits of technology,” said Erica Davis, Zurich vice president and assistant national manager for E&O, while presenting the findings on Tuesday at Advisen’s Cyber Risk Insights Conference.

Throughout the conference, consensus was clear: the 69% of Americans and 88% of businesses are on the right track, as their fears are well-founded. “There are two types of banks today: those that have been breached, and those that will,” Roc Starks, senior vice president and director of corporate insurance at Citizens Bank, said at one of the day’s panels. “First response is the critical difference in how banks and customers will fare.”

Keynote speaker and former Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge (now of Ridge Insurance Solutions) shared this outlook on cybersecurity across industries. “There are going to be breaches,” he said. “Resilient companies are the ones that are prepared to respond.”

Yet breach response without risk management and an eye toward mitigation is no longer sufficient. “Those prepared to organize around risk and resilience are those that will withstand and lead,” he added. “By the time we get here next year, the risks will be different – the digital sun will never set.”

The landscape of cyberrisk and hacking schemes is constantly evolving, and changing at a scale and speed unlike anything seen before, Ridge said. For attendees, there was little doubt about this insight, as panelists throughout the day detailed new phishing schemes seen, top areas of emerging vulnerability, and the myriad breaches they or their industry colleagues have navigated. More companies are investigating the most useful forms of coverage for their unique exposures and exploring what management structures and risk owners are most effective to monitor and mitigate cyber. The recognition is there, and so are some of the solutions, but the insurance landscape must still evolve, as must the strategies. “We’ve seen a mind-shift,” Ridge said. “CEOs get it, but they do not know what to do and who the threats come from.”

To that end, there is more the industry can do to help. Ridge lauded the idea of “intelligent insurance,” arguing that, in addition to devoting greater resources to investigating cyber threats, the insurance industry should turn its attention to incentivizing companies to manage cyberrisk more effectively.

Much as in insurance disciplines like kidnap and ransom, some of the greatest benefits of insuring cyberrisk may come from the processes of evaluation and contingency planning. According to Ridge and other conference speakers, finding out how to oversee and incentivize those processes may be the next adaptation for cybersecurity insurers.

A Turbulent Year for the Aviation Industry, Despite Improving Safety

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MH 17 Wreckage Denis Kornilov / Shutterstock.com

First, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 mysteriously disappeared in March, dominating the news cycle and baffling aviation experts, government officials and civilian observers alike. This month, three tragedies in short succession have kept the industry in the hot seat. Malaysia Airlines made headlines once again on July 17 after Flight MH 17, a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over Ukraine. It is now the seventh most deadly aviation crash in history. Exactly who fired on the plane remains unclear, as do many questions of insurance, as war has not officially been declared, despite months of fighting in the region. An act of war would exclude losses from insurance coverage, but remaining uncertainty does as well. Plus, “Unless Russia has declared war on Malaysia, that would knock out the exclusion,” RIMS Vice President Rick Roberts told Mashable. But for it to fall under under terrorism coverage, “someone has to certify that the act that occurred wasn’t a mistake—that it was a malicious act.” The already struggling company may not be able to survive this second disaster, or the reputational devastation.

Ten Deadliest Plane Crashes

Tragedy has further plagued the industry this month. On July 23, a TransAsia flight from Taiwan crashed, killing 48. The next day, an Air Algérie flight from Burkina Faso to Algeria disappeared less than an hour after takeoff in the air space over Mali. Approximately 24 hours later, peasants found the plane’s wreckage near Gao, Mali, and French soldiers dispatched to the scene were able to recover a black box, but no survivors.

Despite the string of disasters, there is no evidence that air travel is in any way more dangerous on the whole. In fact, it is safer than ever before. Nearly three billion people fly safely each year on more than 37 million flights, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reports, and the global plane accident rate fell to the lowest level in aviation history in 2012. Over the past 10 years, both the crash and fatality rates have trended downward, according to statistics from the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives. But, little more than halfway into 2014, the number of people killed in plane crashes is more than double the total for 2013 (991 and 459, respectively).

Based on BAAA data:

Crashes per year

Deaths per year

Looking back even further, this chart from the Wall Street Journal leaves little doubt that the aviation industry has grown drastically safer:

Deadly flights

While 2014 has been more fatal thus far, the overall number of crashes continues to decrease. There have been 70 commercial-plane crashes globally so far, versus 81 for the comparable period a year earlier, according to Aviation Safety Network, part of the Flight Safety Foundation. Further, the four tragedies do not have any common root causes for their failures.

Insurance Changes on the Horizon

International carriers are feeling most of the strain, and that is likely to have serious implications for insurance premiums. “Given the accumulation of losses, including the loss of Asiana Airlines’ Boeing 777 in San Francisco last year, an explosion causing damage to 20 aircraft in Tripoli recently, and this week’s losses in Africa and Taiwan, these will, altogether, put pressure on the global insurance market,” said Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute. “I expect most of the impact to be focused on international carriers, particularly those operating in or traversing parts of the world that I would characterize as ‘hotspots,’ currently experiencing military or political instability. That would certainly include Ukraine, parts of the Middle East, and parts of Africa.”

While the recent spate of tragedies may leave many travelers wary of getting on a plane, American airlines have less to worry about regarding premiums than their foreign counterparts. There have been are no notable losses this year among domestic carriers, or U.S.-based airlines that fly internationally. As Hartwig pointed out, however, “With a few exceptions, they do not tend to traverse many of those hotspots to begin with.”

In Africa and other developing regions, “you identify accidents in many places that would have happened 30 or 40 years ago in the West, because oversight is lagging,” Dominique Fouda, spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency, told the Wall Street Journal. “You also see different accidents linked to local conditions.”

Key Differences Remain Between House and Senate on TRIA Extension

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As the December 31, 2014 expiration of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act inches closer, both chambers of Congress are moving forward with their version of a long-term extension.

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The Senate is expected to pass its version of an extension as early as Thursday while the House Financial Services Committee approved its version of an extension along party lines on June 20th. The House proposed extension would make substantial changes to TRIA that can be seen in the following table:

Insurance Industry Encouraged About TRIA Renewal

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The House Republicans’ proposed bill to extend the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), set to expire at the end of this year, is “encouraging,” but there are also concerns, insurance industry experts say.

Representative Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) introduced the TRIA Reform Act of 2014 on June 17, which would modify and extend TRIA.

TRIA provides a government backstop for insurers and reinsurers in the event of a catastrophic terrorist attack. The proposed bill would extend the program for five years and make insurers more active participants in the market, according to American Banker. The proposed bill also distinguishes attacks that are nuclear, chemical, biological or radiological (NBCR) from other terrorist attacks and increases the industry’s cost for conventional attacks.

Earlier in June, the Senate Banking Committee approved a bill that would extend TRIA for seven years, increase insurers’ co-pay for all attacks from 15% to 20% after a deductible, and increase the threshold for mandatory recoupment from $27.5 billion to $37.5 billion.

“The House bill is a very encouraging sign, especially because it comes on the heels of the Senate bill (S.

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B. 2244) a few weeks ago,” said Robert P. Hartwig, president and economist of the Insurance Information Institute. “Though the bills contain substantive differences, I think a compromise can and will be reached. Time is of the essence as the uncertainly in the markets is already causing disruptions in the form of exclusionary language and because it is an election year there are relatively few days left on the Congressional calendar.

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”

American Insurance Association (AIA) President Leigh Ann Pusey lauded introduction of the bill, saying that it “adds to the growing momentum behind TRIA’s reauthorization in both the House and Senate. We urge the Committee to swiftly mark up the TRIA Reform Act and move it to the House floor for a vote before the August recess.”

The new law would progressively raise the program’s threshold following conventional attacks from $100 million to $500 million. Insurers would make a 20% copayment after a deductible in the wake of a conventional attack, compared to 15% for NBCR attacks.

Hartwig noted that the insurance industry has some concerns related to the “bifurcation” of NBCR and non-NBCR risks. “Under the bill, non-NBCR risk would be subject to the increased trigger which would rise from its current $100 million to $500 million by 2019,” he said. “Likewise, there’s concern about the increase in the industry’s co-share from 15% to 20%. In both instances, the increase in the industry exposure to potential loss could result in reduced capacity, particularly capacity originating with smaller insurers. The bifurcation also adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the process.”

In a statement, Pusey also expressed concern “with certain provisions of the bill that could lead to decreased market capacity. Most notably, the creation of a bifurcated approach for nuclear, biological, radiological and chemical (NBCR) attacks vs. conventional attacks falsely assumes that the insurance market operates based on the same distinctions.” She said that differentiation based on the type of event introduces “needless complexity, creating potentially adverse consequences under the program and insurance market capacity.

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We are also concerned about the steep increase in the program trigger and co-share, which could also lead to a reduction in capacity.”

Hartwig concluded that while the success of TRIA is “unambiguous, providing continuous benefits to the American economy at essentially no cost to taxpayers, the current resurgence of terrorism in Iraq reminds us that the threat of terrorism is omnipresent.”

He added that some TRIA opponents cite that the bill was originally designed as a temporary measure. “While that may be so, the past 13 years have demonstrated that the U.S. remains under constant threat. Last year’s Boston Marathon bombing made that crystal clear. Prior to the Marathon bombing there had been many unsuccessful terrorist plots—ranging from efforts to bring down airliners to bomb plots in several US cities.”

Neugebauer said he believes the TRIA Reform Act of 2014 will lead to a stronger private market, preventing U.S. taxpayers from making ongoing payments to support another federal program. The House banking committee will vote on the bill on June 18.