Kyle Bryant spent the last 13 years with Chubb, serving as the head of financial lines for Continental Europe, before his most recent role leading cyber international. At Resilience, he will serve as the international chief underwriting officer to oversee the MGA’s foreign expansion strategy.
Resilience was launched last November with a strategic investment and underwriting capacity from Intact Insurance’s specialty solutions arm. The company has since gone on a hiring spree, adding underwriting talent in recent months from Ironshore, Axa XL, Coalition, and CNA, among other cyber insurance carrier stalwarts.
UK is ‘logical place to start’
Resilience has yet to firm up capacity for its international business but indicated that it expected to be writing business by the beginning of next year.
The UK “is the logical place to start,” Resilience’s president, Mario Vitale, told this publication, adding that “Europe [would be] right behind it.”
Vitale contended that Resilience’s “differentiated value proposition” had been so well received in the US that international expansion was a natural next step.
“We are way ahead of the curve in combining cybersecurity and cyber hygiene with risk transfer in the same package,” he added. “[The opportunity] is even more timely than when I joined two years ago.”
“The same exposure exists internationally – in the UK, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Latin America – there’s no reason why we can’t apply these same principles overseas.”
Bryant said he was motivated to join a business that blended traditional underwriting talent and new risk management solutions, which he says is also what differentiated Resilience from its competition.
“I wouldn’t have just joined any other MGA,” he told Inside P&C in an interview. “What Resilience is trying to do is build an underwriting company,” he said.
Bryant joins the program manager amid a pullback in cyber capacity, as incumbent carriers look to remediate portfolios and manage aggregate exposures.
The executive went on argue that the line of business was “no longer fighting for credibility”.
“There is a traditional way of buying ‘off the shelf’ security services that hasn't been integrated into proper risk engineering and analysis to feed underwriting for those risk takers,” Bryant said of both existing carriers and MGAs.
Cyber rates have surged ahead of initial expectations, and capacity has contracted with resistance among carriers to take in new business.
Vitale said that the pickup in pricing has pushed Resilience’s average premiums higher than originally expected, but given a cautious approach to a challenging loss environment, the company has remained within its original premium budget.
