Affluent families are buying bigger homes, more cars, and more sophisticated security systems, but many remain exposed to liability threats reshaping the private client market.
Kevin Daley (pictured), president, private client at EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants, said the conversation with wealthy households has shifted away from property insurance and toward casualty and risk management, with cyber risk and personal umbrella coverage at the centre.
“More and more of our conversations with either centres of influence or clients themselves really focus on the casualty side of their exposure,” Daley said.
Cyber liability is the most overlooked and fastest-evolving exposure Daley sees among high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. He described modern personal cyber cover as a sophisticated form of fraud insurance, protecting households from phishing, account‑takeovers and increasingly complex scams.
“The level of sophistication of the average hacker these days is incredible,” he said, noting that organized networks specifically target affluent individuals because of their wealth and online lifestyles.
Daley now tries to ensure that every high-net-worth client discussion includes two topics: personal umbrella limits and cyber protection. Property remains important, but he argues that the real volatility lies in digital and liability exposures.
He also emphasized that risk transfer is only half of the equation. The most effective programs pair coverage with loss‑prevention support: from basic steps such as segregating home Wi‑Fi networks for bill‑paying, to full‑scale monitoring of household networks by cybersecurity vendors. “A lot of what we talk about is, look, we want to do everything we can to prevent the loss,” he said.
For wealthy entrepreneurs and family‑office clients, Daley warned against assuming that personal cyber coverage will naturally extend to business activity, even if the business is run from home.
Personal cyber programs, like most personal lines products, are designed to respond to individual pursuits. “If you’re an entrepreneur and you have a business, even if you run the business out of your extra bedroom, those are commercial exposures that are usually excluded or not contemplated on a personal cyber policy,” he said.
Advisors should instead structure separate cyber and liability protection for operating companies, portfolio firms and family offices, aligning limits and terms with commercial exposures and IT complexity.
Daley noted that risk‑management principles – from employee education to network security – often overlap across personal and commercial programs, even if the policies themselves are distinct.
Digital exposure is not limited to fraud and financial loss. Daley is also seeing more claims and concern around social media, defamation and cyberbullying, especially involving children.
Most traditional personal excess policies still respond to classic libel and slander claims, even when the alleged harm occurs online. But Daley cautions that wordings vary widely, and that some insurers now address cyberbullying explicitly while others remain silent.
“You really need someone to come in who knows what they’re doing,” he said, pointing to the role of specialist private client brokers in dissecting coverage and helping families understand what is – and is not – protected.
While cyber captures much of today’s attention, Daley is clear that the most severe personal excess losses still come from traditional auto accidents involving fatalities or catastrophic injuries.
He links the rise in large personal injury verdicts to an increasingly organised and well‑funded plaintiff bar. The result for high-net-worth households has been a double squeeze on their umbrella programs: shrinking available capacity at the top layers and higher costs per million of limit.
“It was significantly easier to buy a 25 or 40 or 50 million dollar umbrella 10 years ago than it is today,” he said.
After several years of steep rate increases, Daley sees signs that pricing is beginning to stabilise as carriers approach rate adequacy. Underwriting, however, remains disciplined, with close scrutiny of driving records, youthful operators, vehicle types and jurisdictional exposures.
Looking ahead, he expects technology to remain the defining force in private client risk. For brokers and advisors, he argues, the opportunity lies in moving conversations beyond property schedules and into holistic risk management.
“I don’t see a day in the near future that I’m not talking about cyber with clients,” Daley said. “It’s a really interesting time in the market … there are a lot of challenges out there, but the industry will meet the challenges, no doubt about it.”
