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DISTINCTION.GLOBAL

Founded by Peter Hacker (www.peterhacker.io), a multilingual globally recognized Swiss cyber risk and insurance expert, Distinction.Global researches cyber threat developments and aims at helping companies better identify, quantify and address their cyber risk exposures at Board, Risk Management and Legal Level. We think and search globally, but act with local visibility and independent expert network. The importance of understanding cyber incidents, and its risk and aggregation impact cannot be overstated. Distinction.Global uses manual and machine learning capabilities (including threat and clauses intelligence) to amplify the continuum of contract and exposure assessment in the Insurance, Reinsurance and Corporate Sectors.

Cyber risks have a complex chain of relations starting from an IT object in a Buyer’s Book ending into a broad heterogeneous reinsurance risk portfolio. They are global, don’t respect geographic boundaries, are fully man-made and find many ways quickly to trigger (Re)Insurance programs. Following extensive analysis, global and regional projects, Distinction.Global offer clients an unparalleled analysis and knowledge transfer, instantly emphasizing singularity in contracts and potential aggregation exposures.

Cyber risks have at different stages, depending on the type distinctive levels, complex relations and items to take into account. From non-affirmative (‘silent’) to affirmative cyber risks, Distinction.Global work across policy data sets, points out vulnerabilities, sets policy and portfolio ratings, and highlights confidence and effectiveness of the offered Insurance product.

The past 18 months have shown us in the Reinsurance, Insurance and Corporate Sector that we have to be increasingly prepared with actionable intelligence for extraordinary, parallel risk situations that not only suddenly affect the global economy, but can also affect the everyday life of each and every one of us. Unparalleled risks such as pandemics, cyber and supply chain go hand in hand, and do not respect any kind of borders.

A clear evidence of the shift in digital criminals‘ tactics and interrelated aggregation exposure are recent massive ransomware, dedicated distributed denial of service (DDoS) and cyber espionage attacks causing unprecedented exponential challenges for risk management and (re)insurance exposure.

With such unique developments, cyber risks must be addressed at Group Executive Board Level and with appropriate representation or sponsoring. We have not just the tools, but also the combined risk understanding and data to address risk, legal, actuarial, incident and underwriting today and going forward.

OFFERING

Our team of experts allows us bridge a rather significant gap in risk language and understanding when combining (re)insurance executives with native cyber security and incident specialist. Over the last 24 plus months we have intensively engaged with these parties and helped corporates to review placements and (re)insurers to identify and quantify their exposure aggregation in first- and third-party lines of business. On this journey we met with various cyber data vendors and understand their differences in data offering distinctively well.

Cyber Strategy, Product Assessment and Development

Individual Corporate Clients, insurance or reinsurance organizations do rightly consider cyber exposure as unparalleled and potentially significant earnings risk. We offer a distinctive and independent methodology to review, challenge and ring-fence cyber risk strategies, aggregation models, insurance policy, vendor or broker placement offering.

Cyber Risk Research, Incident and Risk Management

We work as lean organization with bespoke defined local and international intellectual resources defined per project. Notwithstanding this fact, we can always tap into additional expertise from a few reputable organizations with a global track-record in the Cyber Security, Cyber Crime, Legal and Underwriting. Our incident and claims experience is broad and an almost unparalleled combination of cyber security capabilities, structured (re)insurance and portfolio management.

Cyber Risk Board Dialog

Cyber risks are a fundamental Board Topic from a Fiduciary, Risk Management and Shareholder point of view. We are successfully engaged with Boards in various jurisdictions at Corporate, Insurance and Reinsurance Level. Our work is based on in-depth cyber risk and global underwriting expertise, using a proprietary assessment logic combining threat intelligence data, expert judgment and mathematical simulation techniques.

Cyber Risk Aggregation

We appreciate that the cyber market aggregation practice is still very young and handling a multitude of uncertainties as maybe in the Nat-Cat Modelling scene 25 years ago. We strongly believe to be one of the very few specialist experts regarding cyber risk exposure management who are already successfully deploying affirmative, and most import silent cyber aggregation services to reinsurance, insurance and corporate clients built around an integrated risk aggregation model.

Cyber Risk Contract Assessment

The contract wording assessment (@Hacker’s Cyber House Principles) is our proprietary way to assess the vulnerability to cyber threats. The in-depth understanding of the vulnerability is crucial for setting relevant incidents that can stress-test both non-affirmative (‘silent’) and affirmative risks and portfolios. Over the last 36 months we have not just developed a distinct understanding of the major affirmative policies in the market (stand-alone/endorsement), but also an unparalleled database to address silent risks across 30 plus Lines of Business to identify and assess contract/treaty vulnerability to respond on cyber economic and insurance loss.

Cyber Risk Knowledge Transfer

We have developed a staged approach (‘modules’) to cyber risk management built around cyber security, threat intelligence, underwriting dialogue with specific knowledge transfer, training, education focused on cyber risk for senior executive levels as well as underwriting, claims, risk management and legal specialists.

TRACK RECORD

Case 1:
Cyber Knowledge Transfer, Cyber Risk Contract Assessment, Cyber Risk Aggregation

We were engaged by a multinational global insurance group in 2020. We initialy provided an online but live silent cyber training for dozens of Underwriters from Europe, Asia and South America during two half days to raise awareness at underwriting level for what constitutes silent cyber exposure.

Case 2:
Cyber Knowledge Transfer, Cyber Risk Contract Assessment, Cyber Risk Aggregation

We successfully finished a knowledge transfer and silent cyber exposure assessment covering property, energy, marine and liability of a global reinsurance portfolio of a Europe based insurance and reinsurance group. The project spanned 6 months of engagement and a wide screening of direct insurance contracts and reinsurance treaties as representative sample for a full portfolio aggregation view.

Case 3:
Cyber Risk Board Dialog

Over the last 18 months, we undertook various Board and Executive Management advisory engagements covering a holistic range of businesses including property, casualty, specialty lines as well as motor and accident & health, helping satisfy the increasing demand for a comprehensive understanding and quantification of cyber aggregation risk at board and executive level. Thereby three perspectives were on focus (a) companies being targets for cyber actors, (b) (re)insurance companies being exposed silently but also affirmatively should they have started launching dedicated cyber insurance products, (c) seeking advice how to embed this cyber exposure into their view of risk.

Case 4:
Cyber Knowledge Transfer, Cyber Risk Contract Assessment, Cyber Risk Aggregation

In 2020 we developed for a global Specialty insurance carrier its silent and affirmative cyber assessment and aggregation framework that serves their reinsurance placement and regulatory dialogue. The project included the assessment of numerous contracts across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific including affirmative portfolios. The knowledge transfer methodology has been rolled-out to the various Underwriting Hubs in 2021.

Case 5:
Cyber Risk Research, Incident and Risk Management

2019 Peter Hacker finished a comprehensive cyber loss study covering silent and affirmative catastrophic aggregation modeling for the Singapore market and MAS evaluating a global cyber disaster scenario and its implications for the insurance industry. The study was backed by a number of leading direct and reinsurance markets and addressed in the 2017 SIRC.

SERVICE CREDO

Our service credo is helping our client to become an expert and to continuously stay ahead. We therefore aim to build collaboratively a competitive edge at client level and to support such competitive advantage if markets will allow for. We prefer clients who are actively engaged in the process, sharing their internal resources as needed and who allow for bespoke and fully understood solutions rather than becoming a black-box purchaser.
We honor a balanced approach. Whatever we help clients to develop with our strong support will be proprietary to the client. However, tools, framework, algorithms, or applications developed by us and continued to be used by the client will remain our property but will be made available to the client at a competitive price. We will not engage with a client on an exclusive basis, but work based on strong confidentiality and non-disclosure basis ring-fencing any client’s competitive edge.

DIFFERENTIATOR

We run a cutting-edge methodology for risk landscape, contract wording analytics and exposure aggregation.
We have embedded our manual approach into a multi-lingual AI based tool for large scale automated wording assessment.
We cover the full assessment value chain. From contract wording analytics, setting of relevant portfolio incident, exposure aggregation, knowledge transfer to client’s stakeholders.
We are fully independent and offer impartial advice.
We price our service and do not seek compensation through other related or unrelated transactions. Neither any broking firm, data vendor nor (re)insurer has any stake in our undertaking. Therefore, we have no conflicts when working with our clients.

Published Articles

Being a global specialist in this emerging risk field also requires relating to the business eco system. Over the past 24 months we developed relationships with regulators, policy makers, global rating agencies, cyber security think-tanks and Actuaries. Our expert opinions and forward-looking statements are covered various publications such as Asia Insurance Review , Commercial Risk , Reinsurance.bm or Artemis

Discover more of Distinction.Global’s Published Media Article and own Publications

GLOBAL ENGAGEMENTS

Distinction.Global is a privately-operated think-tank and state-of-the-art advisory and cyber observatory unit with a core focus on the Insurance and Banking Industry. We have been successfully operating on all continents providing services to numerous insurance, reinsurance companies and insureds. The headquarter is based in Uetikon am See, Zurich, Switzerland. Whilst we are a lean organization, we have globally recognised expertise in Cyber Security, Cyber Crime, Legal, Insurance and Mathematics with a broad industry network and claim to be uniquely connected with highly relevant, multilingual parties contributing to the cyber risk industry.

With more than 250 keynotes, board advisory sessions and dozens of mandates globally over the last 10 years, Distinction.Global, and its Founder and Director Peter Hacker, is all recognised globally as leading expert in Cyber Crime, Digital Revolution and Insurance. Peter speaks fluently German, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

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