DUAL has significantly expanded its cyber and technology underwriting firepower, increasing line size and adding new tech partners as global demand for cyber cover continues to rise.
The MGA has revised its strategic partnership with a panel of A-rated capacity providers led by Liberty Specialty Markets, enabling it to write larger and more complex risks while retaining a strong SME focus.
Under the new arrangements, DUAL can now offer increased primary limits for organisations with revenues up to £1 billion and enhanced excess limits for risks with revenues up to £5 billion. This broadened capacity extends DUAL’s appetite across a wider range of sectors and business sizes in the mid-market and large corporate segments, creating additional placement options for brokers that may previously have associated the MGA primarily with SME business.
“As the risk management landscape continues to grow and evolve, we’re increasing our capacity to support larger and more complex risks, while maintaining the trusted relationships and dependable solutions our insureds expect," said Simon McGinn (pictured), CEO of DUAL UK.
DUAL's move comes as cyber remains one of the fastest-growing specialty lines for carriers and MGAs. Industry estimates put the global cyber insurance market at around US$16 billion to US$17 billion of premium in 2023 to 2024, with expectations of continued double-digit annual growth as insurance penetration remains relatively low compared with the scale of cyber loss potential.
Much of the premium remains concentrated in North America, but Europe and Asia-Pacific are seen as key growth regions as boards and regulators increase their focus on operational resilience, data protection and critical infrastructure risks. Forecasts from major brokers and reinsurers suggest global cyber premiums could reach tens of billions of dollars by the end of the decade, underlining how competition for sustainable capacity and differentiated propositions is intensifying.
At the same time, the loss environment remains challenging. Ransomware continues to dominate loss activity, with average demands running into millions of dollars and high‑profile attacks on sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing and utilities keeping pressure on pricing, coverage terms and aggregation management. Underwriters are having to balance demand for higher limits with closer scrutiny of controls, vendor dependencies and systemic exposures such as cloud and data‑centre concentration.
DUAL’s ability to deploy increased primary and excess limits, backed by Liberty and other A‑rated markets, positions the MGA as a more substantial capacity provider on larger programmes, particularly for clients looking to build or restructure cyber towers in a market where appetites and attachment points can shift quickly.
Alongside expanded limits, DUAL UK is strengthening the risk‑management spine of its cyber proposition. The company has added KYND as a new partner to provide enhanced cyber risk management services.
KYND offers attack‑surface management tools including external scanning, continuous monitoring and vulnerability analysis to give organisations a near real‑time view of exposed assets and critical weaknesses. Its technology uses non‑intrusive external checks for known issues, supporting insureds as they prioritise remediation and enabling underwriters to draw on current technical data at both individual‑risk and portfolio level.
This capability complements DUAL’s 24/7 incident response framework, which is managed by S‑RM and Kennedys working with a panel of specialist vendors. S‑RM provides incident response and digital forensics services to help organisations contain and investigate cyber events, while Kennedys brings legal, regulatory and claims expertise to support insureds and insurers throughout an incident and any subsequent litigation or regulatory engagement.
The company's strengthened binder widens the range of risks that can be placed with DUAL on both a primary and excess basis. Higher revenue thresholds – up to £1 billion on primary and £5 billion on excess – bring larger corporates and more complex sector risks into scope, including those with significant cloud, data‑centre and AI‑related exposures.
Furthermore, the combination of additional capacity and tech-enabled services also reflects shifting client expectations. As more firms experience cyber incidents first-hand, boards are placing greater emphasis on demonstrable improvements in cyber hygiene, the availability of specialist incident response support and clarity around how a policy will respond in practice.
By reinforcing its underwriting framework, scaling limits and embedding specialist partners, DUAL UK is aiming to consolidate its position in a key growth class, while offering brokers a more flexible, data-informed proposition across the full size spectrum of insureds.
