Cyber program manager Resilience Insurance launches with Intact capacity
The management team behind Arceo.ai have launched Resilience Insurance, a program manager combining cyber security and cyber insurance that will target middle-market risks and write on the AM Best A+ rated paper of Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions.
The San Francisco-based firm has effectively rebranded from Arceo.ai with the launch of the program manager and continues to be led by Vishaal “V8” Hariprasad as CEO and Raj Shah as chairman (both pictured), with a strong line-up of insurance industry executives rounding out the management team.
They include former Aspen Insurance CEO, Zurich Insurance and Willis North America executive Mario Vitale as president, former Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty global cyber head Emy Donavan as global CUO (both pictured), and Mike Convertino, former chief information security officer for Twitter.
Expansive Canadian insurer Intact has also invested in Resilience Insurance through its Intact Ventures unit, alongside existing Arceo.ai backers including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund, CRV and UL Ventures, as well as notable angel investors including John Thompson, chairman of Microsoft.
The move to provide paper to the new program manager through its underwriting companies continues the Intact’s expansion into the US following its acquisition of OneBeacon three years ago.
In a statement, Resilience Insurance said it will take a proactive approach by assessing an organisation’s information security prior to writing coverage, and work with clients to mitigate vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
Resilience Insurance offers comprehensive coverage across the entire lifecycle of a cyber crime event, with primary and excess policies designed for organisations with revenues of $100mn up to $5bn.
It will initially write on a non-admitted basis and deliver its products and solutions through strategic broker distribution partners.
Its approach to underwriting the cyber peril sees it provide a suite of capabilities to chief information security officers and risk managers.
Risk engineering
These capabilities include actionable cyber risk assessments, technical risk engineering and “intuitive” coverage that tracks with the progression of a cyber incident.
Resilience Insurance said its policyholders will benefit from pre-breach, hardening and claims services led by chief claims officer Michael Phillips (pictured), who joined from Allianz where he was head of cyber, media and technology claims for North America.
“We first launched Resilience to secure enterprises from cyber threats by blending cyber security expertise, intelligent risk assessments and risk transfer,” said Hariprasad. “Resilience delivers a new way of evaluating and transferring cyber risk, offering solutions that allow us to deliver better underwriting while significantly reducing our insured’s likelihood of falling victim to cyber crime.”
In the statement, the program manager said that in the current business landscape cyber insurance has become as fundamental to business protection as property insurance.
It described its offering as a cohesive solution to address the full range of cyber exposures from spear phishing attacks to ransomware and data breaches.
Integrating dynamic security and risk engineering with insurance allows Resilience to provide “holistic cyber risk management” for IT security and risk management professionals, the statement continued.
Vitale said the program manager is “reinventing cyber insurance” by aligning its interests with those of the companies it insures.
“Combining cyber security technology with senior underwriting talent mitigates risk prior to policy issuance and encourages insured companies to maintain a vigilant security posture. Superior claims service then sets Resilience apart in the event of a cyber crime incident,” said the executive.
Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions president for the US Mike Miller added: “We are very pleased to be partnering with V8 and the Resilience team, whose track record and deep expertise in the cyber risk space parallels our hallmark specialised approach to the marketplace.”
As previously reported, Arceo.ai launched last February and has assembled a high-profile management team.
Other senior management from the ranks of the insurance industry include former Beazley and AIG executive Charles Pruzinsky (pictured) as executive vice president and CUO, former Arch national brokerage leader Tom Gamble as executive vice president and global chief distribution officer, and former JLT Re North America CFO and COO Jonathon D’Arcy as CFO.