I’ve been getting this question more and more. Agencies I’ve been talking to are seeing the writing on the wall:
- Our data is out there in a bad way from breach after breach, it’s only a matter of time before it gets used against us.
- Threat actors are ruthlessly targeting us (especially the elderly and minors) with sneaky social engineering attacks, and leveraging AI to get better and faster.
- The fear of ID Theft, Fraud, and all of the trouble that comes with recovering are on more and more people’s minds.
With cyber liability becoming more crucial for businesses, offering coverage for individuals starts to make good sense.
But where do you start with Personal Cyber or Identity Theft Protection? What do people need? And, is it a viable option to roll out in today’s market?
Let’s dig into it in today’s article!
What Do People Need to Protect?
For individuals, our risks around cyber threats and fraud can fall into some of the same categories you’ll see me write about often when I talk about cyber risks to business.
I find it easier to start with the “What’s it mean IF I have an incident?” perspective and look to the CIA Triad of Cybersecurity for 3 easy categories to weigh:
- Confidentiality: What data do I need to keep protected and where is it?
- Integrity: What do I trust and what if that trusted resource becomes compromised?
- Availability: What technology do I rely on and what does it mean if it’s not there?
When I think of my own home and family, here’s what I’m worried about if any of those three areas become a problem.
- Is sensitive data about me out there? What is out there? And, most importantly, is anyone using it?
- Could someone hack my computer or another account? What would they do if they did?
- If I make a mistake and trust a clever scammer when I shouldn’t have, can I get any lost money back?
- If someone pretends to be me and gets access to my accounts, how do I get my money back and restore my identity? How long is that going to take and what do I do in the meantime?
In all of these situations, it all comes down to monitoring for suspicious activity and recovering by restoring my identity and getting my money back.
There’s a second component with protecting ourselves from this happening in the first place, which is often the same challenge for businesses buying cyber liability. This is the other side of the coin and comes down to building awareness, security tools, and being cautious.
The good news is that the same types of coverage that provide monitoring and recovery will often have a good amount of resources to help individuals learn how to reduce their chances of falling victim.
Even when we do a good job of protecting ourselves, identity theft can still happen to us.
This is why having some kind of protection and recovery service is crucial for each and every one of us.
What Is Often Covered?
As you dig into Personal Cyber or Identity Theft Protection, you want to three core capabilities included in your coverage:
Detect, Monitor and Alert
Every second counts, so the sooner you know there is suspicious activity, the more you can minimize the damage. You need a service that can watch out for your information being misused and bring it to your attention quickly.
Recover
Fixing your identity can take time, and often pulls people away from work. Bank accounts, social security numbers, or other items related to your identity and accounts may need to be changed to protect yourself. You may even need to repair your credit or get money back. This process can be the most stressful part for many of us and the most difficult part to navigate without experience. Having a team do this on your behalf can help you get your life back to normal faster.
Insure Against Loss
Recovering your identity can be a difficult process, but also costly. Expenses can mount up and, in some cases, it can take weeks to get frozen bank accounts active again. Reimbursement insurance can be a huge help with covering expenses related to getting your identity restored.
Among these core areas, the level of service behind these capabilities may vary from policy to policy. Many offerings will have different levels of coverage in these areas offered at varying prices to give consumers options.
In addition to coverage, consider a few other areas to compare to find the right offering for you:
- Options for consumers: (Levels of coverage, Family or Individual options, Group options for Employer Paid or Voluntary, and resources or services available to consumers)
- Price
- Minimum Group Size (when offered to individuals as a group benefit)
- Minimum Book Size
- Commission
- Reseller Costs
- Ease of Enrollment
- Reseller Tools and Resources
- Exclusivity (can you only have one option?)
How Do You Roll It Out?
Depending on the offering you choose, many agencies can find some quick wins.
I work with defend-id to help agencies become resellers and these are three strategies I always recommend:
Personal Lines
I’d do this with your commercial lines too, but start off with an announcement and content that will draw in some quick wins with your current book of business and give you a good reason to advertise to current prospects.
I recommend a webinar to bring awareness to the current risks of ID theft and fraud, how attacks are happening today, and ways you’re helping people protect themselves with tips, resources, and your new offering.
This is where additional articles, newsletters, or tips can be dripped out through social media or your other channels.
For anyone that doesn’t engage in the ‘grand opening’, you’ll be able to create a drip marketing or call campaign to continue to share tips and build awareness so they’re primed to consider it again upon renewal.
Since this type of coverage can be sold to a business as a group benefit, you can also create a referral system to get individuals discounted or paid-for coverage when it’s offered through their place of work.
Groups
If you already sell benefits and don’t offer Personal Cyber or Identity Theft Protection, you may find this is easy to add.
Many businesses don’t offer it yet as a benefit today but it’s one that can add a lot of value for that employer since a lot of the impacts of identity theft fall back to them. Employees miss work, are stressed, and it’s been known to impact others around them. There’s good incentive for a business to invest in this for their employees.
We’ve had agencies find success by asking as casually as saying “Do you want fries with that?”.
As you discuss other benefits, ask “Should we include ID Theft Protection and Recovery?”.
Employer-paid rates can be as cheap as a cup of coffee per employee per month, so many people are open to it and want it for themselves.
If they say no, you can fall back on the Voluntary option: “No problem! We have a voluntary option where the employee can still get it at a discounted price so we can let them decide if they need something like this and want to pay for it themselves.”
Cyber Liability
If you really want to stand out with a unique cyber liability offer, consider leveling it up with coverage for the individuals at the business.
If businesses are looking at protecting themselves from cyber risks, one of their biggest challenges is culture.
If you want to change the culture, you need to get employees bought in.
Investing in them through a personal cyber or Identity Theft Protection coverage is one way to get their attention.
By adding this, the business can say: “We are building a smarter culture around cybersecurity and want to start by investing in protecting you, at home.
“Our company will provide coverage to help you detect and monitor for suspicious activity, and services that will help you recover your identity should you need it. This will also give you access to resources so you can learn how to protect yourself at home.
“In return, we ask you to take what you learn and also apply it here. Help us protect the company as well as the impacts to you and your coworkers from cyber threats by taking part in our trainings and helping to rally behind some of the changes we need to make to be safer.”
Not only does this help give the business momentum to change their culture, it gives you more value to your cyber liability offering without adding much cost.
Is It Worth It?
I can’t speak to other offerings outside of defend-id but here are some of the figures around the value of this kind of offering:
- defend-id’s average group size is 65 employees and average rate is $5/employee/month or $325/month
- Our commission varies between 20% on our Retail (Individual) and Voluntary offerings or 25% on Employer Paid
- Pricing really depends on a few choices in the coverage, but every option we have is below $22/month (the average cost is $5/person/month)
For our offering, there’s no cost to resell or minimum requirements, so there’s no real downside.
The biggest hurdle for many agencies isn’t seeing the financial potential, it’s finding the time to get it going.
Since time is a challenge, we work to make it as easy as possible for you to implement this as a new offering. Our enrollment process is very simple to learn and takes only a moment to set up a group, so the learning curve to get going is minimal.
With strategies like those I laid out above, you hopefully have some ideas about how to get some initial sales, but we’re always happy to work with agencies to get them whatever templates, content, or other tools to help them make it easy to launch.
And, since just like cyber liability riders vs a standalone option, people may find that their homeowners’ personal cyber is lacking. Having options will help you be more versatile in meeting the needs of your customers and nurturing their accounts.
How Do People Get Going?
For defend-id, if you’d like to consider reselling you can check out our site and sign up as a partner to start reselling right away. Check it out here.
If you want to explore it further first, I help with onboarding new agencies and would be happy to answer whatever questions you have. Just shoot me a message.
Whatever you decide to offer, this is a product many people need today and I encourage you to look deeper into finding a product that’s a good fit for you and your agency.
Best of luck!
