Business News: Worley, Cisco Partnership

Louisiana-based Worley Claims Services, LLC, a national provider of insurance claims services, announced the acquisition of Audit Services Incorporated, a claim estimate writing and review supplier for the property and auto insurance markets. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. StoneRidge Advisors, LLC advised Worley on the transaction.

Founded in 1998, ASI offers high quality estimate writing and review services for its property and auto clients throughout the United States. Through its workforce of approximately 350 employees, ASI specializes in providing desk estimate review, post repair audits, total loss estimates and call center capabilities.

The transaction with ASI is Worley’s sixth acquisition since 2015. In July of 2015, Worley acquired Fishers, Indiana-based NCA Group, a provider of daily and catastrophe residential and commercial property claims services throughout the U.S. In October of 2015, Worley acquired Charlotte, North Carolina-based RJMW Claims Services, a regional provider of daily and catastrophe residential and commercial property claims services. In July of 2016, Worley acquired San Jose, California-based Summit Independent Claim Services, which provides commercial/GA and residential property loss adjusting services. In August of 2016, Worley acquired Orlando, Florida-based Nexxus Solutions Group, a national managed repair contractor and service provider network serving the property insurance industry in the U.S. and Canada. Most recently, in June of 2017, Worley acquired Massachusetts-based Apex Claims Services of New England, a regional provider of property claims services.

Cisco, Apple, Aon and Allianz announced a new cyber risk management product for businesses, comprised of cyber resilience evaluation services from Aon, secure technology from Cisco and Apple, and options for enhanced cyber insurance coverage from Allianz. The new offering is designed to help a wider range of organizations better manage and protect themselves from cyber risk associated with ransomware and other malware-related threats; the most common threats faced by organizations today.

The new product covers the primary dimensions of cyber protection for businesses. The key elements of the offering include:

• Cyber Resilience Evaluation: Aon cyber security professionals will assess interested customers’ cyber security posture and recommend ways to help improve their cyber security defenses.
• Cyber Insurance: Allianz evaluated the Cisco and Apple technical foundation of the solution and determined that customers using Cisco Ransomware Defense, and/or qualified Apple products can be eligible for the Allianz-developed enhanced cyber insurance offering, acknowledging the superior level of security afforded to businesses by Cisco and Apple technology. This, in combination with individual risk insights gained through the Cyber Resilience Evaluation, makes possible the enhanced cyber insurance coverage to Cisco and Apple business customers. Enhancements include market-leading policy coverage terms and conditions, including potentially qualifying for lower, or even no, deductibles in certain cases. The cyber insurance coverage is underwritten by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS).
• Cisco Ransomware Defense is part of Cisco’s integrated security portfolio that leverages industry leading threat intelligence from Cisco Talos to see threats once, and block them everywhere. It includes advanced email security, next-generation endpoint protection and cloud-delivered malicious internet site blocking, to strengthen an organization’s defenses against malware, ransomware and other cyber threats.
• Apple products: iPhone, iPad and Mac offer tight integration of hardware, software and services on iOS devices ensures that each component of the system is trusted, from initial boot-up to installing third-party apps. Users benefit from always-on hardware encryption, as well as support for secure networking protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) and VPN out of the box.
• Incident Response Services: Organizations will have access to Cisco and Aon’s Incident Response teams in the event of a malware attack.

The new product is available now. For further information visit https://cisco.com/go/cyberinsurance