Hiscox launches cargo cover tailored for underinsured SMEs

Bermuda-based specialist insurer Hiscox has launched a new cargo product for small and medium-sized businesses, aiming to cover risks often underserved by the London market.

The Cargo API (application programming interface) solution, offered via broker partners, targets small cargo and stock throughput risks for SMEs with global storage and shipping needs. It covers risks ranging from clothing and lumber to equipment, agri-products, and finished items. 

Hiscox built its Cargo API in-house, including risk models, policy wordings, and software, with all risks backed by Hiscox Syndicate 33.

Price Forbes, the first broker partner, developed the front end to enable direct access for itself and its partners.

The API offers transit, stock-only, and stock throughput cover, with limits up to $5 million with most risks falling below $1 million, streamlining quote-and-bind capabilities for risks within appetite.

Hiscox said the product meets demand for cover on smaller cargo risks often left out of the London market.

Aimee Nolan, line underwriter for cargo for Hiscox London Market, said: “We were asked to help respond to a need from companies for a cargo insurance product for smaller-sized risks; needs that were not being met by a London insurance market more used to dealing with larger and more complex cargo risks. Our digital solution is available to brokers, to enable them as our coverholders to immediately start pricing and binding smaller cargo risks.

“We see our Cargo digital product as not only an innovative way of meeting client demand with a product that can provide immediate coverage, but also as a means of bringing new premium into the London insurance market that would otherwise be retained locally. This solution complements and balances our portfolio of larger, more complex and catastrophe-exposed cargo risks, while providing an easily repeatable template to develop other digital solutions for other coverholders where Hiscox has the risk appetite.”

Huw Davies, executive director at Price Forbes, added: “We were regularly being asked to help find cargo insurance solutions for small to medium sized cargo risks so we turned to Hiscox, to see if they could develop a digital solution given their existing strong reputation in this area for other lines of business. Hiscox’s Cargo API is the result and we are delighted to see it launch as it provides an attractive new insurance facility for many cargo owners who may previously have had to look elsewhere for cover or where there was no solution for them.”

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