Chubb is expanding its global clinical trial liability insurance coverage. Liberty Mutual is now giving premium discounts to auto insurance customers who drive a Volvo with advanced safety features. RMS has beefed up its cyber modeling offerings.

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Chubb is expanding its global clinical trial liability insurance coverage for institutional research organizations including hospitals and medical centers, universities and colleges, research institutes, patient/disease advocacy organizations and physician practices.

Chubb dubs these organizations “nontraditional research organizations.” The insurer said that clinical trial coverage for these groups can now be obtained through its dedicated Life Sciences Industry Practice rather than its Healthcare Industry practice, which has usually provided clinical trial insurance for institutional research organizations.

Chubb Clinical Trial products and services include: coverage limits up to $20 million; worldwide coverage, with locally admitted policies where required; global certificate of insurance issuance capability, minimizing the potential for costly delays; specialized clinical trial knowledge, underwriting expertise and risk engineering capabilities and claims coordination through Chubb’s worldwide network.

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Liberty Mutual teamed up with Volvo to provide premium discounts to auto insurance customers who drive a Volvo with advanced safety features.

Liberty Mutual’s new TechSafety program allows insureds to save up to an additional 10 percent on their premiums if they drive Volvo vehicles featuring City Safety technology, which includes pedestrian, cyclist and large animal detection with emergency autobrake.

The discount will initially be offered to customers in Illinois starting in April, with plans to roll it out to additional states throughout the year. Liberty Mutual and Volvo Car USA have collaborated since 2010, offering Volvo owners savings and unique features to their auto policy through the Liberty Mutual affinity program.

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Catastrophe modeling firm RMS added a new class of “cyber-physical” models to its range of cyber models.

These new models explore a range of cyber attack scenarios that can cause physical damage to property, allowing property insurers and reinsurers to manage this growing risk. RMS said this new capability builds upon its existing roster of RMS cyber models, which focus on attacks against information technology systems.

Cyber risk is no longer confined to specialist writers of affirmative cyber insurance. It is now a peril that can cause losses in traditional property insurance policies that are either ambiguous or silent about whether they will pay out for cyber-triggered losses.

The five new risk scenarios in the RMS Cyber Accumulation Management let insurers spot silent exposures in lines including property, marine, energy, industrial and facultative facilities. The scenarios are based on detailed technical analysis of vulnerabilities, possible attack vectors and potential insurance payouts: cyber-induced fires in commercial office buildings, triggered fire in industrial processing plants, triggered explosions on oil rigs, cyber-enabled marine cargo theft from a port and regional power grid outages.

Sources: Chubb, Liberty Mutual, RMS