Howden, the Society of Licensed Conveyancers (SLC) preferred professional indemnity insurance (PII) broker, have a launched a bespoke cyber liability insurance product for the conveyancing profession. Premiums start from £270 with discounted insurance rates for SLC member firms.
The launch responds to increasing concerns about cybersecurity. Commenting on the new product was Edward Donne, Director at Howden, who stated: “Cyber-crime and data related incidents, whether criminally motivated or otherwise, are an increasingly widespread issue. Conveyancing firms are heavily exposed to the threat and we are receiving an increasing number of reports from clients of data or IT related incidents.”
Donne continued, “There is a misconception that the breadth of the CLC professional indemnity (PI) terms and conditions mean the policy will respond to all possible claims, whether first party or third party. Cyber liability insurance is an emerging field. There are, currently, no straightforward answers to many of the questions that arise about which insurance policy should respond. However, we would advise firms to continue to look to their PII policy for indemnification from breaches of professional or fiduciary duty but, we do not believe it is advisable to solely rely on the PII policy to respond to a loss, whether yours or a third party’s in relation to either data or IT. A cyber policy provides immediate access to the specialist expertise a business needs to minimise the impact of a breach and it should cover first party losses that arise as a result of, for example, an interruption to systems or data loss.”
The Howden policy is underwritten by Dual Corporate Risks, an established, market-leading managing general agent. The cover is aligned with the CLC Professional Indemnity policy to ensure it is provided for a broad range of third and first party losses, arising from cyber exposures. The policy’ s key features include immediate access to a specialist team to help mitigate the loss of a cyber event, first party cover for losses arising as a result of a social engineering attack and cyber crime coverage for a wide variety of electronic perils.
This article was submitted to be published by Howden UK Group Limited as part of their advertising agreement with Today’s Conveyancer. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Conveyancer.
