Silent Cyber Added to Willis Re’s Cyber Portfolio Management Tool PRISM-Re

LONDON, England, Jan. 8 -- Willis Towers Watson, an advisory, broking and solutions company, issued the following news release:

Willis Re, the reinsurance business of Willis Towers Watson (NASDAQ: WLTW), the leading global advisory, broking and solutions company, today announced it has upgraded its cyber risk portfolio modelling tool PRISM-ReTM to now include silent cyber.

PRISM-ReTM was first launched by Willis Re in February 2015 and has since become a vital tool for its clients, helping them to manage their cyber portfolios and estimate downside risk arising from privacy breach and network outage following a cyberattack.

The innovative 2018 update to PRISM-ReTM offers the insurance market access to the stochastic modelling of cyber losses on a worldwide basis, arising from insurance policies not specifically designed to cover cyber risk.

The latest version of PRISM-ReTM supports insurers and reinsurance buyers to more effectively manage their exposure to cyber risk across their entire portfolio of property and casualty business. The model incorporates the likelihood of a loss resulting from silent cyber and overlays this against client-specific non-cyber limits profiles and loss severity curves to generate a full loss distribution for silent cyber loss potential in isolation, or in conjunction with affirmative cyber loss.

The likelihood of loss is derived from the responses of around 750 insurance professionals to Willis Re's 2017 silent cyber survey which focused on the extent to which the cyber aspect of exposure would increase the likelihood of a covered loss to various industry segments in the property, other liability, auto and workers compensation lines of business.

Mark Synnott, Global Cyber Practice Leader, Willis Re said: "Silent cyber is a leading concern for the insurance industry at every level, including management, boards of directors, regulators and rating agencies. Recent events have exacerbated the threat that cyber poses to insurers across their non-life portfolio and we are extremely proud to introduce a tool that provides a comprehensive assessment of an insurer's exposure to cyber loss. In conjunction with our innovative reinsurance product, CAStL, the 2018 update of PRISM-ReTM allows our clients to quantify and protect their overall portfolios against cyber losses wherever they might arise."

Jess Fung, Head of Cyber Modelling, Willis Re said: "The addition of silent cyber to PRISM-ReTM represents another significant innovation by our highly skilled analytics team. Our model can now generate a full probabilistic frequency and severity loss distribution for silent cyber loss potential in isolation, or in conjunction with affirmative cyber and allows insurers to monitor changes in cyber exposure composition at different probability levels. We believe it will further improve the ability of our clients to model and manage the large and growing cyber threats that we face."

About Willis Re

One of the world's leading reinsurance brokers, Willis Re is known for its world-class analytics capabilities, which it combines with its reinsurance expertise in a seamless, integrated offering that can help clients increase the value of their businesses. Willis Re serves the risk management and risk transfer needs of a diverse, global client base that includes all of the world's top insurance and reinsurance carriers as well as national catastrophe schemes in many countries around the world. The broker's global team of experts offers services and advice that can help clients make better reinsurance decisions and negotiate optimum terms.