Financial Services

We take a holistic view of the financial services sector, as we believe it is essential to have a broad understanding and depth of knowledge of the entire financial environment to be able to offer sound advice and direction.

We work with banks, private equity firms, asset and wealth management firms, hedge funds, investment advisors, trusts, exchanges (including crypto), broker dealers/stockbrokers, insurance companies and credit unions to help them understand changes in the insurance market and adapt their risk management and transfer strategies.

The diversity of our client base means we understand risk from many different perspectives, enabling us to provide greater levels of strategic insight around:

We aim to provide optimum coverage and claims certainty, premium efficiency and to reduce the total cost of risk. Using our in-house analysis teams, we can model the following to help fully evaluate optimal options on offer within the insurance market:

• losses (self-funded or transferred)
• premium (captive, external and/or virtual)
• indirect costs (loss adjustment, tax, administrative, fronting, letters of credit)

Our significant experience working with a wide range of clients across the globe means we are ideally placed to support financial institutions and financial services companies with their evolving risk and insurance needs.

Comprised of corporate lawyers, tax specialists, ex-mergers and acquisitions (M&A) underwriters and insurance specialists, our Transactional Risks team works globally across mid-market (GBP10m — GBP500m) transactions in all sectors. We partner with corporate lawyers, mid-market private equity firms, corporate finance firms, and institutional investors and can also offer US style coverage for UK law deals. The transactional products that we have the ability to place in the market include the following:

• Warranty & Indemnity (W&I)
• Distressed M&A
• Global Tax Insurance
• Contingent Risk Insurance (CRI)
• Insurance Due Diligence (IDD)

To complement and support the insurance products our Transactional Risks team advise upon, our in-house M&A claims team represents our clients' interests, and where appropriate, looks to leverage our position in the market to get claims paid.

Developing resilience to cyber liability is now a significant challenge for businesses of every size. Instead of offering a generic, off-the-shelf cyber insurance policy, our specialist team takes a consultative approach, designing a cyber-protection programme that's carefully tailored to your industry and even your particular business, from mid-size firms to multinationals.

Coverage can include:

• Cyber extortion
• Cyber terrorism
• Data asset loss
• Cost of responding to a breach
• Regulatory investigations
• Defence costs, civil fines and penalties
• Business interruption
• Loss of income
• Multimedia liability
• Extensions are also available for reputational damage and cyber-crime

In a highly competitive environment, many companies are forced to trade on increasingly fine margins. Credit and political risk insurance can help to protect and grow these margins, securing cash flow whilst benefiting from the risk transfer capabilities of the insurance market to access new customers and markets, safe in the knowledge that your business is protected. In addition to this, companies that insure payment risks, either on a trade or structured credit insurance basis, can typically obtain improved financing terms from banks, providing further liquidity support.

We have extensive experience in providing solutions for precisely these kinds of risks to businesses worldwide and operating in multiple sectors — from energy to paper and pulp, and from transport to healthcare.

We can provide comprehensive credit insurance to protect you against non-payment from a commercial customer as a result of bankruptcy, protracted default or political risks. If you have assets overseas, we can also provide you with political risk insurance to help protect you in the event of political interference from the host government, allowing you to own and operate valuable manufacturing or distributing hubs to serve your global customer base.

We have a global reach and our experience of dealing with risks in most territories provides us with an in-depth understanding of specific issues faced by our clients. This allows us to provide bespoke risk transfer and insurance (and reinsurance) solutions working directly with clients, retail brokers and cedant insurers.

We can offer insurance specialist knowledge on:

• Financial Institutions Vault and Safe Risk (including Excess or Infill of Bankers Blanket Bond Placement for cash or bullion in transit, safety deposit boxes and vault risks)
• All Risks (including Fidelity Insurance)
• Investor Compensation (including Excess SIPC, CIPA and FSCS)
• Lost Instrument Bonds
• Armoured Car Companies/Cash Management and Transit (CIT)
• Securities
• ATM Coverage
• Terrorism (Cash and Securities)
• Safety deposit boxes
• Crypto Currency (Bitcoin) Storage Facilities
• ERISA Bonds