Christopher Keegan
The lure of leading an effort to start a practice from the ground up was enough to hook Christopher Keegan.
After eight years with Willis, Keegan joined large-account broker Beecher Carlson to lead its Cyber Liability Practice. He started late last month.
True, it helped that many on his new team are familiar faces. Most come from Marsh, where Keegan spent six years before his time with Willis beginning a division focusing on privacy, technology, media, network intellectual property and professional liability. But Keegan told Advisen he is excited to lead.
“To build this new practice they’re creating—that was very exciting,” he said. “I think we can do some great things in the cyber and technology markets, developing products the firm can leverage for other clients.”
Keegan arrives to an infant product in CyberSelect. Beecher Carlson introduced CyberSelect in March—a product the broker said offered enhancements yet to be seen in the marketplace.
“I admit, I was ready to tear it up, but it is outstanding,” Keegan said if CyberSelect. “Cover for offline and online media and primary limits of up to $50 million—it is a solid product.”
“The best way to design a program is to fit the client,” he added. “Some policies say you must use a specific vendor and some require consent. This product eliminates that and allows you to get started responding.”
New solutions
Top-of-mind for Keegan is finding solutions for risks associated with third-party vendors and the collection of information.
“Most policies cover a hacker,” he explained. “But they do not provide coverage for just collecting data, and there are risks with recent regulation and legislation.”
Keegan said he’d also like to focus on property and cyber coverage—the reconstruction of data from a physical loss.
Active role in risk
The industry veteran (Before Marsh, Keegan developed cyber-risk policies at Zurich) said insurers have been doing a good job of “doing more than just paying claims.”
“The industry has been good at partnering with vendors so a situation can be dealt with appropriately with crisis management,” he said. “I think you can see we’ve broadened coverage every year and there are new entrants into the marketplace with the potential to add new ideas.”
However, where the industry has room for improvement is with “guidance pre-breach,” Keegan added. “The industry could be doing more by leading in-house presentations, table-top exercises, actively cooperating with the government, etc. We have an opportunity to be more than takers of risk. This is a more important issue than that.”
Looming large
Asked which cyber risks have the potential to bring about catastrophic losses, Keegan agrees the Cloud creates plenty headaches when attempting to think about aggregation.
“Nobody knows but the Cloud providers,” Keegan said.
But Keegan also mention terrorism, as well as the susceptibility of code when thinking about the cyber risks keeping him up at night.
“The one thing I think about is an event that creates a situation in which people lose faith,” he said. “Something that creates a general distrust and unrest can have a profound effect on society.”
Chad Hemenway is Managing Editor of Advisen News. He has more than 15 years of journalist experience at a variety of online, daily, and weekly publications. He has covered P&C insurance news since 2007, and he has experience writing about all P&C lines as well as regulation and litigation. Chad won a Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Single Article in 2014 for his coverage of the insurance implications of traumatic brain injuries and Best News Coverage in 2013 for coverage of Superstorm Sandy. Contact Chad at 212.897.4824 or [email protected].
