June delivered two sharp and well-attended #WisdomWednesday sessions that between them covered two of the most pressing areas in commercial insurance today: the escalating cost of cyber incidents, and the evolving challenge of placing mining and construction risks in a hardening market. Both sessions were technically rigorous and grounded in practice, offering members valuable insights from practitioners working at the coalface of these specialised disciplines.
Webinar 1: Beyond the Headline — The True Cost and Long Tail of a Cyber Incident
Speakers: Justin Westcott (CTO, DataGr8) | Inze Strydom (Business Development Manager, Phishield)
Session Overview
The first June session tackled a topic that continues to grow in strategic importance: what a cyber incident actually costs a business once you move past the initial breach notification. The conversation between Justin Westcott and Inze Strydom pushed well beyond the technical dimensions of cyber events to interrogate the true commercial, regulatory, and operational footprint of a modern cyber incident. Justin Westcott brings a rare combination of credentials to this subject.
Key Themes
- The session structured the conversation around four major cost areas that arise when a breach occurs:
- Detection and escalation costs, which are often underestimated and can consume significant resources before any containment is achieved
- Notification obligations under POPIA and Joint Standards 1 & 2, which impose specific timelines and duties on affected organisations
- Post-breach response costs, including forensic investigation, legal counsel, public relations, and customer remediation
- Lost business — the revenue impact from operational downtime, customer churn, and reputational damage — which frequently dwarfs all other cost categories
A significant portion of the session was dedicated to the regulatory environment. South Africa’s POPIA framework, combined with the requirements of Joint Standards 1 and 2, has materially changed what organisations must do in the aftermath of a breach — and the associated cost of compliance under pressure. Speakers noted that regulatory scrutiny continues to intensify, and that the penalties for inadequate response now rival the direct operational costs of the incident itself. Ransomware trends and recovery timelines were examined in detail. The session highlighted the widening gap between what organisations assume about recovery speed and the operational reality of restoring systems, rebuilding trust, and resuming full functionality following a significant ransomware event.
The presenters were clear that cyber resilience must now be treated as a board-level business priority, not an IT department matter. Perhaps most relevant to the insurance professional audience was the discussion on the growing role of cyber insurance as a business continuity tool. The discussion clearly highlighted that cyber coverage is no longer a compliance checkbox — it is an essential component of how organisations manage liquidity, continuity, and reputational exposure in the wake of an incident. The session reinforced the importance of brokers understanding both the policy mechanics and the operational realities their clients face.
Webinar 2: Future Proofing Mining and Construction Risks
Presenters: Tyrelle Correa (Head: Mining & Construction) | Stacey Swartz (Head: Internal Broking) | Siya Sibeko (Client Executive)
Session Overview
The second June session was delivered by GIB Insurance Brokers, one of South Africa’s most significant specialist broking houses. The session was structured around a four-part agenda: why futureproofing has become a strategic imperative, programme design and structural resilience, risk positioning and underwriting engagement, and the shift from insurance buyer to risk owner.
Why Future-Proofing Matters Now
GIB opened by establishing the urgency of the conversation. Mining and construction risks are attracting increasing underwriter scrutiny globally, and in South Africa specifically. Insurer appetite is no longer a given, and the session was direct: even operationally sound businesses can become difficult to place if their risk narrative, data quality, and programme structure are not actively managed. The era of renewing a mining or construction book by default — price-led and relationship-dependent — is closing.
The underwriting landscape has shifted in ways that many risk buyers have not yet internalised. Key risk drivers now weighing on appetite include increasingly complex operations, ageing assets, power instability, growing cyber exposure through operational technology automation, climate-related volatility, and social disruption risk. The practical consequence is reduced appetite for underground fire, processing plant business interruption, coal exposure, and catastrophe-exposed surface infrastructure, alongside higher deductibles, tighter sub-limits, and exclusions that are now standard rather than exceptional.
Programme Design and Structural Resilience
The session made a compelling distinction between programmes designed to survive the next renewal and those designed to survive the next market cycle. GIB’s philosophy — stated plainly during the session — is that it designs programmes for the latter. This reframing has practical consequences: it means prioritising programme architecture over pricing, ensuring deliberate alignment across assets, projects, plant, liability, and SASRIA, and building in lifecycle thinking from the construction phase through to ongoing operations.
Participants were reminded that small structural decisions at placement have outsized consequences at claims stage. The session introduced the concept of deliberate loss layering — making conscious decisions about what risk is retained versus transferred — as the hallmark of a well-designed mining or construction programme. The SASRIA dimension was also addressed, with the reintroduction of wrap cover (structured as an R500 million XoL) noted, while speakers were candid that current structures are more limited than historic norms.
Risk Positioning, Insurability, and Underwriting Engagement
The third section of the session offered the most technically detailed guidance of the session. GIB challenged the conventional view of risk surveys as compliance exercises and reframed them as advocacy tools — instruments through which a broker translates operational controls into underwriting confidence. The session drew a clear line: poor information quality increases price and restricts capacity. Good information, presented well, does the opposite.
The session noted that underwriters are now asking whether a risk is improving, static, or deteriorating — not merely reviewing loss history in isolation. Claims history, while necessary, is no longer sufficient. Governance, controls, and survey quality now play a decisive role in how capacity is allocated. Broking notes and claims narratives matter in ways they did not a decade ago. Mining and construction risks were also examined through the lens of convergence. Brownfield expansions, EPC-style works, and contractor-intensive shared risk environments are creating pressure points at the intersection of contractors’ all-risk cover, plant and assets, and liability. GIB stressed that contract risk and insurance risk are not automatically aligned — and that the gap between them needs active management.
From Insurance Buyer to Risk Owner
The session concluded with what may have been its most important message: the shift required of risk buyers is not technical, it is behavioural. Insurance decisions are balance sheet decisions. Programme structure directly impacts capital resilience, earnings volatility, and risk retention — and organisations that treat insurance as a procurement function rather than a risk management function should be mindful of some of the unintended consequences. GIB encouraged a model of closer integration between operations, finance, and risk management, and argued for treating claims as feedback loops rather than post-event administrative processes. Losses should inform underwriting narrative and future programme design. Brokers, in this model, are long-term risk stewards rather than annual renewal messengers.
Closing Thoughts
Both sessions were exemplary additions to IIG’s #WisdomWednesday series. They demonstrated the value of bringing practitioner voices directly to the IIG’s members, with speakers who are not theorising about market dynamics but navigating them daily on behalf of their clients. The IIG thanks Phishield and GIB Insurance Brokers for their generous sponsorship and for sharing their expertise so openly with the insurance community.
Insurance Institute of Gauteng | #AspireTogether | Engage. Connect. Grow
Co-Opt: Education – Insurance Institute of Gauteng
Head: Operations SA – Swiss Re
