Enhancing Cyber Risk Solutions Globally

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Text: Travelers.
A woman sits in a chair in front of glass windows. She holds a stack of papers and a pen.

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INTERVIEWER: Joining me now is Matt Waller, Head of Cyber for Travelers Europe, to discuss the acquisition of Corvus London Markets. So Matt, it's good to have you with us today.

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We zoom back to see Matt sitting across from her in a chair. Glasses of water sit on a round table between them, and a counter in front of the windows displays the Travelers logo.

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MATTHEW WALLER: Thank you for having me.

INTERVIEWER: Now, Travelers acquired Corvus at the beginning of this year. What's been happening since then?

MATTHEW WALLER: Yeah.

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Text: Matthew Waller, Head of Cyber, Travelers Europe.

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Right now, we're bringing the teams together, which has been a really nice experience. There's been a lot of talk about the cultural similarities between Travelers and Corvus, and that's really driven by our customer-centric model, where clients come first, and the people come first, in that process. And that's really important for cyber.

And as we bring the two teams together, assimilating the individuals, our products together has been a nice journey to be on. There's a lot more to come, and we'll talk about that now. But, yeah, been great so far.

INTERVIEWER: So what would you say is your USP as you approach the market as a combined team? What can Travelers bring to the market that other companies perhaps can't?

MATTHEW WALLER: Yeah. Well, we think it's a really great combination, bringing Corvus's technology and InsurTech mentality, a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit, with the amazing brand and strong rating of Travelers.

So a global brand like Travelers, with the company and the understanding of insurance market that they do on a global perspective, combining that with the Corvus technology is a really winning formula in the cyber space, where we can bring a lot of the risk-control solutions that were offered by Travelers and Corvus, the technology that was brought to the table by Corvus, and the ongoing monitoring that we're providing through our Corvus scan. And we're looking to bring that across the Travelers product suite as we move forward into the future.

INTERVIEWER: Well, let's look a little bit closer at this unique technology Corvus has brought to Travelers. How has this experience been for the clients? And is this offered to all the Travelers clients?

MATTHEW WALLER: So right now, globally, it isn't. So it's really been a US-centric product, but we are looking to roll that out in the foreseeable future. Travelers historically has been very focused on the UK and Irish markets through their Travelers Europe platform.

What we've now brought with Corvus is the syndicate and the Travelers syndicate to the table, which really provides an international and global offering that wasn't there prior to that. And the immediate term is to start providing our Corvus scans to our UK client base, where we can now provide ongoing monitoring of our clients, the Travelers clients, as well as the Corvus clients throughout the policy period.

So when a client is buying a cyber product, it's not just a buy it and put it on the shelf, but through the scan, we're providing continuous risk mitigation, vulnerability monitoring, and outreach to our clients. So they're regularly informed of the threat landscape that's associated with cyber. And that's historically something that was there with Travelers but not on the reach out to the client.

So a lot more client engagement, a lot more interaction between our broking partners and our clients through the technologies that we're bringing to the table.

INTERVIEWER: And has technology prevented cyber attacks from happening?

MATTHEW WALLER: We can say it has, yes, because of how our scanning technology works and identifying vulnerabilities from our insureds. So the scanning technology, essentially, is consistently monitoring our client base. And what it is able to do is identify threat vulnerabilities or areas that are unpatched within a network, and we can provide ongoing client outreach to notify them of those potential vulnerabilities.

So it's really meaningful for our clients as we look at that. Because what that then allows them to do is prevent the ransomware event from happening. Because oftentimes, threat actors will look at those vulnerabilities, and that will be the point of attack vector that they'll use to go after a client. So, yeah, through our threat monitoring, through our scanning, through our technology, we can say that we've helped prevent ransomware attacks in the past.

INTERVIEWER: And what does the integration of Travelers and Corvus teams mean for brokers today?

MATTHEW WALLER: So for brokers today, there's a broader offering that we're now bringing to the table. As I said, Travelers Europe has been majority focused on the UK and Irish territories. And now, through the syndicate, we're offering a global offering. And now we can provide our solutions not only to small and medium-sized companies but large multinational companies.

So whether you're a small retailer in the UK or a large multinational based in Singapore, for example, we can provide an offering to either bend of those client spectrums. And cyber risk is not solely for one part of the business-- or sorry, one size of business or one size of client. It's a global risk.

And no matter the size of the company, the industry they're in, cyber risk transfer solutions are critical for protecting your balance sheet and, as a board of directors, considering what the exposures are to your business. So we really think now, through the combination of the insurance offering that we're providing, it provides a really broad solution to our broking market and our broker partners that now they can turn to us and we can help them through whatever size client they need to find a solution for them.

INTERVIEWER: And are there any particular industries that could really benefit from the integration of your businesses?

MATTHEW WALLER: Well, I would say, quite frankly, every industry can be helped through this product offering. Cyber risk, as I said, it's an exposure that crosses industry sizes and types of industry. Yes, there's nuance to the exposure to each, but every business will have some level of cyber risk exposure.

Because a lot more businesses are handling data. We're a lot more integrated on the technology side. All employees are touching technology. So if you think about where cyber risk is now, it's touching all parts of a business, no matter the size or location of a client.

So we really think what we're looking at is now a suite of offerings to all those clients. Now, what we're looking to do now as we move forward is becoming a lot more targeted in our approach to those markets and looking at, how do we really find those risk transfer solutions that support our small businesses to our corporate businesses? And the small businesses will be more reliant on the scan because they might not have a CISO or an in-house security team.

And what we can do now, through our scanning technology and through our risk control team at Travelers, is provide those risk control solutions, as well as providing the insurance product. And that full suite offering is a really valuable position to be in in a market that's growing internationally. And we think by talking to our clients, talking to our broker partners around that offering will really provide a lot of value to our clients but also to the Travelers product.

INTERVIEWER: What's been done in terms of educating brokers so they understand what cyber risk management efforts are needed to really protect clients?

MATTHEW WALLER: So we have a very large risk control team at Corvus and within Travelers that helps educate our clients. So we've done that through webinars, through education forums, through our broker partners, for our clients as well, and provided an offering that way. Again, we've also got the scan. So we'll provide sentinel alerting, which notifies our clients of vulnerabilities and informs, also, our clients that might not be affected of things that they should be aware of.

So there's ongoing education throughout the policyholder's life cycle with us or new buyers as well. So if there's buyers coming to the market, we'll help them through the process of onboarding them to our Travelers products, to the risk control team, working through their cyber-hygiene processes, through the underwriting process, and inform them of what threat landscape we're looking at from an underwriting perspective.

INTERVIEWER: Now, why do you think penetration of standalone cyber cover has been low to date, and what do you think can be done to change that?

MATTHEW WALLER: Well, it's grown a lot, the cyber market. So we're definitely hitting an opportunity globally that we're trying to take advantage of. Historically, it's been driven by the US, where we've seen a lot higher penetration. But for Travelers Europe and Corvus London Markets, we're really looking to expand globally and basically translate our information from the US perspective into the offering that we're providing globally.

We have a massive data set on the US side, a lot of policyholders. We want to bring that same experience to the rest of the world. Part of the reason we haven't seen that penetration globally is because of education, which we've talked a lot about already.

Clients aren't fully aware of what a cyber insurance policy does, aren't fully aware of what their cyber risk footprint might be. So we need to bring them on that process of first understanding what their cyber risk footprint is because you're not going to buy a cyber insurance policy unless you know what the exposures are.

And so what we're doing is informing them of those things through our education, through the scan, through informing them of the threat landscape. And at that point, we can then say, all right, you get these solutions on the front end, and then you can also transfer your cyber insurance offering. And that information cycle just takes longer.

We saw that in the US side in the development of the product 20-plus years ago, that we had to inform them of the additional services that you get within a cyber policy. And at that point, it was really claims solutions and providing the response services. And we're able to do that now globally through our 24/7 response at Travelers, and we'll continue to offer that as we expand.

But now we're doing the front-end piece as well. So you've got another service offering of cyber education, cyber risk hygiene and technology that we're coming to the table. And, actually, insurance just becomes a really small piece of the pie of everything else that we're offering in our product to the market.

And the hope is, as we go through that life cycle into new territories, we'll see increased penetration as clients and our brokers understand that risk transfer solution and understand the cyber risk hygiene. It's a journey. It's a journey that we're going on at the moment, but we think there's a huge opportunity outside of the US and in the global marketplace to bring that to the table.

INTERVIEWER: Well, finally, how do you see Travelers' cyber offering evolving in the future?

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Text: Matthew Waller, Head of Cyber, Travelers Europe.

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MATTHEW WALLER: Yeah. So there's a lot more to come. We want to continue to invest. So, obviously, with the acquisition of Corvus, that was a big investment from the Travelers standpoint, and that's a really strong endorsement of where they see the cyber market going and where we see the cyber market going globally. And we want to continue to support that.

So we're going to continue to invest in technology, continue to invest in our education, continue to invest in our claims services, and bring those products to the market. And now what we need to do is look at those market segments that I mentioned earlier, from the small to the large, and identify how we want to go to market in those specific areas and in those specific countries.

So that's going to be what we're going to be doing over the foreseeable future, is saying, what territories we want to go to, what’s the product we want to be providing there and look at those solutions. And then there's also a segment that we haven't really touched on is our light footprint strategy, which is an area that we're looking to also continue to expand on, which is where we're supporting MGA partners or local insurers and providing our solutions to go to market locally.

One of the challenges that we have when you're growing globally is you're kind of a step removed in London. But, actually, if you're working directly with a client or an insurer or an MGA locally, they're much closer to the client. They understand that life cycle and can form us on the decisions that we're making in London to provide the best solutions to their clients.

So I say, watch that space as well, of seeing where we go with our light footprint strategy as well as our small, medium market offering in the rest of the world.

INTERVIEWER: Matt, thank you.

MATTHEW WALLER: Thank you very much.

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Text: Travelers.
Information and opinions contained in this interview have been arrived at by Travelers, and any underlying research or analysis has been procured by Travelers for its own purposes. It does not, and it is not intended to. provide legal, technical, or other professional advice, nor does it amend, or otherwise affect, the provisions or coverages of any insurance policy issued by Travelers. Travelers does not warrant that adherence to, or compliance with, any recommendations, best practices, checklists, or guidelines will result in a particular outcome. Furthermore, laws, regulations, standards, guidance and codes may change from time to time, and you should always refer to the most current requirements and take specific advice when dealing with specific situations. In no event will Travelers be liable in tort, contract or otherwise to anyone who has access to or uses this information. Travelers and the Travelers Umbrella logo are registered trademarks of The Travelers Indemnity Company in the U.S. and other countries. All other registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Travelers and InsureTV accept no liability for any loss arising from the use hereof nor make any representation as to their accuracy or completeness. Travelers operates through several underwriting entities in the UK and Europe. Please consult your policy documentation or visit the websites below for full information. travelers.co.uk. travelers.ie