Specialist insurer Hiscox has launched a new crime product, Hiscox Crime Insurance, designed to protect small businesses in the UK and Ireland against a broad range of fraudulent acts from both internal and external parties.
Designed to complement other commercial insurance policies, particularly cyber and cyber-crime, the product is aimed at SMEs and for the first time gives them affordable access to more comprehensive cover, ranging from theft of money, securities and property, to telephone fraud and reputational damage, Hiscox said in a statement.
Businesses are also able to purchase a social engineering endorsement, covering the emerging but prolific problem of fraudsters posing as a real people, i.e. company directors to exploit unwitting victims, the Bermuda-based company added.
A pre-priced proposal form has been carefully drafted for this product to give brokers and clients ease of access to the broad cover on offer.
“For many organizations, it is a question of when, not if, they will suffer economic crime,” noted Bronwen Horn, senior development underwriter at Hiscox UK.
“A recent study by PwC found that 50 per cent of UK business respondents have experienced economic crime. These risks are becoming more complex, and the threat can come from employees, suppliers, customers, agents, hackers and unknown third parties,” Horn added.
“Commercial crimes are often discovered purely by chance, and while the financial impact on a business can be devastating, what is often overlooked is the resulting threat to business processes and the reputational impact. These kinds of losses, while not always quantifiable, can over time dwarf the relatively shorter-term impact of financial losses. Our product has been developed to help our clients overcome all the impacts a commercial crime loss can cause,” Horn went on to say.
Hiscox Crime Insurance covers:
- Criminal taking or misappropriation of money, securities or property (with no distinction between employee and third party losses)
- Physical destruction or disappearance of money and securities while on premises, in employee custody or in transit
- Criminal taking by an employee of money and securities or property to the deprivation of a client
- Criminal taking by a third party of client money, securities or property for which the insured is liable
- Expenses cover (with its own extra limit of liability)
- Computer violation
- Telephone fraud
- Public relations costs
- Court attendance compensation.
Source: Hiscox
Topics Fraud
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