Engineering Consultancy, Cyber With Social Engineering Cover

An engineering consultancy approached us for standalone cyber cover. Like a lot of professional firms, they handle client data and rely on email for payment instructions, so a breach or a fraudulent payment request could hit them directly.

They were clear on what they wanted: a $1 million cyber limit, and crucially, a social engineering extension to respond if someone was tricked into transferring funds to a fraudulent account.

That extension is not automatic in every cyber policy. It was the specific thing we needed to get right.

We took the risk to our cyber markets and compared both price and what each policy actually covered, with the social engineering extension front of mind.

• We obtained a spread of quotes across the market so the client could see the range and what each one included.
• One market capped its limit below the $1 million the client wanted, which ruled it out despite a competitive price.
• We checked the funds-transfer fraud wording on each option, because that was the cover the client most wanted to be sure of.

The client had a firm start date, so we lined the placement up to bind cleanly on that date with no gap in cover.

The main thing to manage was making sure the cover matched the brief rather than just the headline. A cheaper policy that capped the limit too low, or left the social engineering extension out, would not have done the job.

Funds-transfer and business email compromise cover is one of those features that varies between policies, so comparing on premium alone would have been misleading. We checked the wording on each option before recommending one.

We placed the cyber cover through DUAL, with the $1 million limit and the social engineering extension the client wanted, ready to bind on their start date.

The client got cover that responds to both a data incident and a fraudulent payment, which was the whole point of the exercise.

This case is a reminder that cyber policies are not interchangeable. The extensions, like cover for funds-transfer fraud, are where comparing the wording matters as much as comparing the price.