Cowbell, the broker-distributed cyber insurance insurtech, is already operating at scale across the US and UK and is now turning to Australia. Later this month the firm will launch a cyber product aimed squarely at the SME and lower mid-market space.
The promise to brokers is not simply another cyber wording in an already busy market. Cowbell’s pitch is that cyber penetration remains stubbornly low among SMEs and that distribution will only move the dial if insurers make cyber easier to place, easier to explain and more obviously valuable before a claim ever happens.
Claud Bilbao (pictured), Cowbell's VP, underwriting and distribution UK and Australia, said this SME protection gap is still holding back the category.
“When you have a look at penetration of cyber in the SME space, it's anywhere between sort of 5% to 20%,” said Bilbao. “So there's definitely an existing protection gap.”
For brokers, that gap cuts both ways. It points to growth potential, but it also signals a product that can be hard to sell, particularly when SME buyers think cyber only happens to household-name brands. Bilbao argues the industry sometimes reinforces that misconception by leaning too heavily on high-profile incidents - making cyber feel like a “big corporate” issue rather than a daily operational risk for the smaller firms that make up the bulk of the economy.
Cowbell is positioning Prime One as a broker-friendly platform as much as an insurance product. Bilbao says the company’s differentiator is not just cover, but what sits around it: a risk assessment approach informed by ongoing scanning, benchmarking and feedback to insureds - designed to help clients improve posture and, in turn, reduce claim frequency and severity.
Bilbao said the offering is unique, partly because of its data on millions of businesses:
“Our risk pool is made up of 45 million businesses from different parts of the world, including the US, the UK and importantly, we've got millions of Australian businesses within our risk pool,” he said. “What we're doing is we're continuously scanning these businesses so that we can get a real idea of what their cyber resiliency posture looks like.”
One broker implication is that if an underwriter already has meaningful external signals on an applicant, there is less need for a drawn-out submission process - and more ability to make the conversation with the client concrete. Bilbao said Cowbell can share benchmarking insights back with insureds, aligning insurer, broker and client around a common goal: improved resilience, not just premium.
Cowbell said it is also aiming to reduce friction at point of sale. Bilbao said brokers using its platform can quote and bind in under five minutes, a claim that - if it holds up across common SME classes - could be a competitive edge in a segment where time kills momentum and cyber is often deferred to “next renewal.”
Bilbao described what is effectively an “ecosystem” model: services that begin from day one and aim to reduce the likelihood of incident. Prime One, he says, includes 12 months of online cybersecurity training and phishing simulation for employees, reflecting the continued role of social engineering and human error in many losses.
Policyholders also get access to Cowbell’s risk engineering team of cybersecurity experts and can opt into a “micropenetration test.” Cowbell framed this as a controlled, contract-based exercise focused on three critical assets, followed by a remediation discussion to address vulnerabilities uncovered. The pitch to brokers is that these services make the cover easier to justify to SMEs that are sceptical about intangible insurance - because the client can extract value even if they never claim.
On claims, Cowbell emphasised control and coordination. Bilbao said Cowbell has an in-house claims team and in Australia it will also work with local incident response partners. For brokers, claims credibility remains one of the most practical differentiators in cyber - particularly when ransomware and business interruption pressures collide with reputational urgency.
Cowbell’s Australian operation will start with underwriting and distribution leadership on the ground. Claims capability is also being built out locally – a key differentiator for competitors like CFC and Emergence. Longer term, Bilbao said the plan is continued investment across underwriting, claims and distribution, deepening broker relationships and expanding access to cyber insurance for Australian SMEs.
If Cowbell can deliver a broker workflow that is measurably faster, while bundling practical resilience services that make cyber easier to sell, it may do what many entrants promise and few achieve: raise baseline expectations in SME cyber and force competitors to respond where brokers can feel it most: placement friction, service and claims support.
