Canada Insurers
Coalition Enters Cyber Excess Market in Canada

• David Pilla
• September 2021
• 

Cyber insurance and security company Coalition said it will enter the excess cyber insurance market in Canada.

With the move, Coalition will extend its reach beyond primary insurance coverage in Canada to provide brokers with excess cyber liability and technology errors and omissions insurance for accounts with up to C$5 million (US$4 million) in aggregate limits for companies with up to C$1 billion in revenue, the company said in a statement. The new excess capacity is backed by Arch Insurance Canada Ltd., Coalition said.

Its entry into the Canadian E&S market will help protect businesses with enhanced coverage and free access to Coalition's cybersecurity capabilities, including attack surface monitoring, an in-house response team of security experts and a suite of services and tools, Coalition said. The company said it began offering excess cyber insurance in the United States in July 2020.

Coalition said it launched in Canada in May 2020 and has become one of the country's largest writers of cyber insurance, offering up to C$20 million of comprehensive insurance coverage supported by Swiss Re Corporate Solutions and Arch Capital Group Ltd. to companies with up to C$1 billion in annual revenue.

“Since launching in 2020, we've grown one of the largest dedicated cyber teams in the market and have built an on-the-ground incident response function to protect Canadian companies,” Shawn Ram, head of insurance, Coalition, said in a statement. “Adding excess insurance to our offering in Canada provides brokers with more options to protect their clients and access Coalition's cybersecurity tools and services. As the broader cyber marketplace continues to harden and retreat, Coalition is looking for new ways to expand its reach, maintaining stable and planned growth in the U.S. and Canada.”

Coalition is backed by Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, Arch Capital Group, Lloyd's and Argo Group, the company said. It provides companies with up to $15 million of cyber and technology insurance coverage in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as C$20 million of coverage across nine provinces and three territories in Canada.

How to Respond

The ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline this past spring caused real-world impact when the 5,000-mile U.S. fuel pipeline was shut down for six days. Now, cyber insurers and observers are questioning how to respond to a world in which ransomware attacks are increasingly sophisticated, faster and more expensive.

It highlighted the real concern cyber experts have had that an attack could cause significant destruction to critical infrastructure and hurt the U.S. economy and way of life, said Jake Olcott, vice president of the security ratings firm BitSight.

But the basic elements of the attack—that cybercriminals took advantage of a vulnerability they found in a company's computer system—was something experts in cyber insurance have seen over and over, according to Joshua Motta, chief executive officer and co-founder of Coalition, one of the largest providers of cyber insurance in the United States.