Nir is the founding CEO of Cyberwrite, an AI cyber insurance firm that enables the prediction, quantification, and mitigation of the financial impact cyberattacks have on businesses and helps them purchase the cyber insurance policy they need. This is done through the Cyberwrite broker network which spans 50 states and includes hundreds of agencies and thousands of brokers. Cyberwrite provides its patented risk analysis platform to simplify cyber risk into terms that brokers and business owners can easily understand and act upon. Founded in 2017, the company delivers more than a quarter of a million cyber risk reports a year, is active in over 20 countries, and its product is available in six languages. Nir holds an LLB, and an MBA from the MIP Business School in the Politecnico di Milano in Italy. He has been working for over 22 years in cyber risk management for global insurance companies and banks consulting industry leaders such as Allianz and Deutsche Bank.

Excerpts from an interview:

Conception of Cyberwrite

“In 2016 I got a phone call from my father, who is an insurance broker and he asked me to help his team figure out how to sell more cyber insurance (insurance against cyber-attacks). He owns an agency for over 50 years now, but cyber was new and neither his brokers nor the customers who are mainly SMBs had the knowledge needed to make the most out of this opportunity. There was, and still is, a gap between the broker and the customer created by the fact non of those parties is usually a cyber security expert, and even if they are, collecting so much data and analyzing it is a cumbersome task. On my way back to the office I understood that while the corporates I worked for have invested millions in cyber security annually, SMBs  are underserved and brokers had a huge opportunity to monetize upon. This is why we created Cyberwrite – to help brokers sell more cyber insurance and help businesses get the cyber policy they need while reducing their cyber risk. Today using our platform brokers can offer risk reports to any business within minutes as well as quote and bind policies from our carrier partners.

The need for cyber insurance started accelerating in 2016 when the market started growing at a much faster rate of about 25% annual growth rate. Cyber is said to be the single largest insurance opportunity for the foreseeable future. Every business will buy some sort of cyber insurance in the future as assets and businesses are digital dependents. We have insureds from every sector ranging anywhere from a cupcake factory to huge legal firms and construction companies. Everyone is buying cyber insurance and this trend will continue.

At the same time, our technology now enables underwriters to make an underwriting decision in real time based on our cyber security findings and AI-driven risk predictions. In addition, we provide a financial impact analysis so that the business will get an indication of what a breach would look like for them. Carriers that share our reports with their customers have seen loss ratios lower than 25% – while the average in the US is over 56%.”

Cyber insurance and the remote workforce challenge

“With the increase in remote workforce, more and more businesses began suffering from severe cyber-attacks, ransomware attacks, and downtime and regulatory fines as a result.  Our technology provides cyber risk reports which help more than 250,000 businesses each year to understand their risk and reduce it by both cyber security means and by buying the cyber insurance policy they need. Small businesses do not have sufficient access to effective cyber security measures – but the Cyberwrite platform enables them to get access to critical data and risk analysis they would otherwise not have access to.  With the move to a remote workforce, these businesses are especially exposed and we are here to enable them to protect themselves using our cyber technology and an insurance policy. Companies that buy a policy through our broker network gain from ongoing monitoring throughout the lifecycle of the policy and real-time alerts in case an issue has been identified. It is important to prevent a breach beforehand if possible, as after making a claim it could be much harder to renew and the premium may surge. Insurance is not a replacement for protection.”

Cyberwrite’s insurance services

“Our capability is not just intelligence and gathering of data. We enable an end-to-end insurance experience connecting carriers, brokers, and businesses, which results in less risk and more efficiency for everyone in the process. The platform provides a cyber risk report, a quote, and a quick and easy binding process. We also provide a dedicated portal for each insured and ongoing monitoring throughout the policy’s lifecycle to help avoid a cyber breach. This is an end-to-end service for everyone involved, including the reinsurance companies that get full visibility into their book of business with a level of granularity that enables them to make decisions aligned with their risk appetite and manage their accumulation risk.”

Innovation and Insurtech

“In Insurtech in general, there is still huge room for innovation. While some companies offer awesome technologies, a large portion of incumbent Insurtech providers, unfortunately, offer solutions that are very outdated and frustrating to use. However, it’s hard to replace some of these solutions because of the stickiness they created in the industry, but eventually, they will be replaced, and some will disappear like other companies that were too late to innovate in other fields. I still have my original Blockbuster membership card to remind me what happens to businesses that don’t innovate in time.”

The success mantra

“At Cyberwrite we always put the customer in the center, focus on win-win deals, and aim to never be too comfortable with our product – we always try to improve the value proposition. By promoting these values in our organization we are able to provide our customers with best-of-breed technology and service which we believe our customers and partners deserve to have access to.”