Senior executives from India’s general-insurance industry have identified artificial intelligence, synthetic documentation and correlated cyberattacks as emerging challenges for underwriting and risk accumulation.
Cyber incidents differ from many conventional insured events because one compromised technology vendor, cloud platform or shared service provider can generate claims across several companies and geographies at the same time. This concentration makes it harder for insurers to estimate maximum exposure, price coverage and determine the amount of risk that can be retained without reinsurance.
AI is adding new dimensions to the problem. Generative systems can be used to create synthetic documents and more sophisticated fraudulent claims. Autonomous or semi-autonomous AI agents can also take unanticipated or unauthorised actions, raising questions about whether resulting losses fall within existing policy wording.
Acko General Insurance Managing Director and CEO Animesh Das said the speed at which cyber threats evolve requires real-time evaluation and significant technical capability. The discussions also involved GIC Re Chairman and Managing Director Hitesh Joshi, HDFC Ergo Managing Director and CEO Parthanil Ghosh, and Pallavi Malani, India leader for insurance practice at Boston Consulting Group.
The executives identified stronger stress-testing, underwriting discipline, reinsurance protection and clearer policy terms as necessary components of insurers’ response. The discussion also highlighted the gap between consumer interest and actual adoption: research presented at the event found that 69% of respondents expressed interest in retail cyber insurance, while only 4% had tried or purchased such cover.
