SINGAPORE: Singapore is setting up the world’s first commercial cyber risk pool as part of efforts to develop the region’s capacity to deal with threats from cyber attacks, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced at the 15th Singapore International Reinsurance Conference on Monday (29 Oct).
“The pool will commit up to US$1bn in capacity, and bring together both traditional insurance and insurance-linked securities markets to provide bespoke cyber coverage,” he said.
“To date, twenty insurance firms have indicated their interest to participate in this pool, which would allow corporates in ASEAN and Asia to be protected against cyber-related losses,” said Mr Heng.
Cybercrime was estimated to cost the global economy about US$3 trillion in 2015, a figure that is expected to double by 2021. And Asia is vulnerable, said Mr Heng. Hackers are 80 per cent more likely to target organisations in the region, yet 60 per cent of Asian companies do not have proper cyber threat monitoring systems.
So apart from investing in cybersecurity to prevent and deter attacks, better risk pooling will mitigate the consequences of attacks. Singapore had…
