How underwriters price your risk
The insurer sells you coverage for downtime losses, and the price reflects two expectations: how often a stoppage may happen and how long it will last. The first is about prevention; the second — about recovery speed. A company that recovers in two days is several times cheaper to insure than one that will stand still for three weeks, even at the same incident probability.
Without your documents, the underwriter prices you «by industry» — that is, by the worst case with a margin. Everything you failed to show is interpreted against you.
Five documents to show
- Business impact analysis — proof that you know your critical processes and the cost of their downtime (how to run a BIA).
- A continuity and recovery plan with recovery time objectives for key systems and production lines.
- Exercise records from the last year. A tested plan is worth an order of magnitude more than a written one.
- Backup architecture — data copies, standby capacity, alternative suppliers, manual workarounds.
- Incident history with lessons — not the absence of failures, but mature reactions to them.
Numbers that cut the premium
Three figures work hardest: recovery time measured in exercises rather than declared; the share of revenue the business retains in degraded mode thanks to workarounds; and the cost of one day down calculated by method, not by feel (the method). The same numbers define the right sum insured and indemnity period — without them companies routinely buy the wrong coverage for the wrong duration.
What raises the premium
- Single-site operations and sole suppliers without alternatives — single points of failure (how to find them).
- Backups living on the same network as production systems.
- Paper plans without exercises — underwriters have learned to tell living documents from decorative ones.
- Omissions in the proposal form: a mismatch discovered at claim time can cost you the payout.
BCM and insurance together
Continuity and insurance are two halves of the same cash-flow protection: BCM shortens and prevents downtime, insurance covers what cannot be shortened. Mature BCM lowers the premium and improves claim outcomes, while the insurance lens shows where investing in resilience beats paying for risk. Our resilience dashboard puts the underwriter's numbers on one screen — so you negotiate as an equal.
FAQ
How much can the premium drop? Depends on the industry and your current rating; the practical range for demonstrated BCM maturity runs from noticeable percentages to tens of percent — plus better deductibles, indemnity periods and exclusions.
We already have a policy — too late? No: documents are reviewed at renewal, and substantial improvements justify mid-term renegotiation.
Cheaper policy or right coverage? Right coverage. The biggest BI losses come from underinsurance and wrong indemnity periods, not from premium size.