(FT) Insurance groups urge state support for ‘uninsurable’ cyber risks

Cyber attacks pose a risk as big as terrorism and flooding, according to two of the world’s biggest insurance groups that are calling for state support to help the industry to absorb losses. 

Insurer Zurich and Marsh McLennan, the world’s biggest insurance broker, say in a new report that cyber threats are “outpacing the ability of traditional insurance and risk management approaches to fully mitigate them”.  There are “limits to the amount of financial loss” the private sector can absorb, the report says, given the potentially huge losses that could be caused by a cyber attack on critical infrastructure.

It proposes a number of steps to address this, including creating public-private partnerships to share losses from currently “uninsurable” events, such as a cyber attack that causes a widespread failure of key infrastructure.

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