Marsh launches Resilience for UK midsize market

Marsh has launched Resilience, a new product aimed at mid-sized UK firms, which it claims simplifies insurance buying.

The broker said its product is centred on risk management, insurance and claims.

Resilience will feature “simple, easy-to-follow insurance policies designed by Marsh to make coverage clear”, according to the company.

“We thought about where we could make the most impact,” Mark Weil, CEO of Marsh UK & Ireland told StrategicRISK. “

“Middle market firms have big and complex risks, but without some of the scale or resources in risk management,” Weil said.

A panel of 10 insurers is signed up to the scheme, bound to its policy wordings to compete for business within it.

Cyber risk is among the insurance protections featured in the Resilience product.

Resilience includes a contractual commitment from insurers to act on claim notified claims within 30 days.

“We think the better insurers deliver that timing, but the contract takes away the uncertainty on that,” said Weil.

Claims preparation support and claims advocacy services are offered, to reduce risk that claims are incorrectly filed, and to represent clients in a dispute or delay in settling a complex claim, respectively.

“That is relatively typical in the large corporate segment, but less typical in the mid- to small-size commercial segment,” said Weil.

Risk management services, part-funded by insurers, are also included, “to support clients in areas such as property risk control surveys and health and safety management”.

Weil suggested there are advantages of packaging products into a suite, “designed to reduce gaps and overlap” by fitting together.

“It helps transcend the boundary between insurance and risk management,” he said.

“A limitation of insurance is that it transfers risk to a third party but often doesn’t reduce that risk,” said Weil.

“Through the claims support and risk management services, it can help to de-risk and to reduce frequency severity of claims, so that companies are less exposed to operational risk,” he added.

On cyber risk, Weil suggested insurance as a “useful avenue for thoughtfully addressing cyber risk”.

Resilience offers cyber risk elements to a property policy, and plans to add similar bolt-on cyber elements for combined and motor policies. Weil was however keen to emphasise the risk management services for cyber risk.

“The risk management services are available to help them think it through and to help manage losses, through cyber scenario development and quantification,” he said.

For smaller firms lacking resources, it can be useful to “trigger the conversation about cyber”, he suggested. “It catalyses that cyber conversation,” he added.

Cyber risk advisor appointed

James Saunders has joined Marsh as a strategic adviser on cyber risk management, the broker has said in a separate announcement.

He will work within its UK specialist cyber security and risk team, part of the firm’s client advisory services division.

Saunders was previously director of the National Cyber Crime Unit at the National Crime Agency (NCA).

His hire follows Marsh’s appointment last year of Sir Iain Lobban, formerly director of UK cyber spying agency GCHQ, as a senior cyber risk adviser.

Before joining the NCA, Saunders was director of international cyber policy for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and before that began his career in 1988 at GCHQ.