AI tools enhance Beazley’s reputational risk insurance coverage

Beazley, the specialist insurer, has enhanced its reputational risk insurance policy with a suite of new artificial intelligence-enabled tools.

The policy is underwritten by the Custodian Consortium at Lloyd’s, led by Beazley. It is designed for consumer-facing companies across a range of industries including leisure, hospitality, technology, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.

The cover is available to companies globally, subject to licencing restrictions, and offers protection for the lifespan of a reputational crisis. It includes crisis management services to minimise reputational damage, and business interruption cover that insures against the impact to profitability of a downturn in revenue.

Coverage also includes a subscription to reputational, economic, social and governance (ESG) and risk intelligence provider, Polecat Intelligence. The platform uses online and social data to assess an organisation’s reputational profile and performance globally, benchmarking these against competitors and peers.

The Polecat platform is available 24 hours a day and seven days a week to policyholders via a web-based portal, helping companies to anticipate potential threats to their reputation.

The Custodian Consortium, renewed in January 2021, includes participants from the Lloyd’s Product Innovation Facility: RenaissanceRe, Tokio Marine Kiln, Chaucer and Talbot.

Trevor Maynard, Lloyd’s head of innovation, described reputational risk as “a fast evolving issue, and a growing priority for many businesses around the world.”

George Beattie, head of incubation underwriting at Beazley, highlighted rising public anger and intolerance, and deteriorating trust in authority, coupled with the rise of social media, all of which is creating a more volatile reputational environment for businesses.

Beazley’s solution “provides executives with reputational insights at a time when many companies are the target of stakeholder action relating to perceived failures to act on emerging risks,” Beattie said. It also “helps companies to mitigate the risk to profitability posed by reputational crises by paying for loss of profit and providing immediate access to crisis consultancy services.”

James Lawn, co-chief executive of Polecat Intelligence, said the platform allows Beazley’s reputational risk policyholders to benchmark their reputations objectively against their peers.

“Organisations that seek to actively manage their reputations and ESG profiles by harnessing data and market intelligence are more strongly positioned to anticipate and manage emerging threats,” he said.