Meet the Team – Chad Chaffin
October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so we are taking a peek into a day in the life of cyber team member, Chad Chaffin. Chad is Vice President, Property & Casualty Underwriting, with responsibility for our Cyber insurance products, along with Agent E&O.
Q: What does a typical day at BCS look like for you?
A: As a small company relative to our direct E&O and cyber liability competitors, we are in a unique position of taking on many roles and responsibilities. This allows us to be very creative, innovative and nimble, moving quickly in a very demanding and extremely dynamic market.
Every day we are focused on production, creating and maintaining strong broker relationships, and underwriting cyber risks that range from very small sole proprietors to Fortune 100 companies in most industries across the country.
We are also responsible for placing our reinsurance, working with our marketing department to build collateral and grow the BCS brand. As an admitted carrier we work very closely with our compliance department to ensure correct and timely filings of our products. We collaborate with claims to monitor loss trends and ensure we are maintaining a very high level of claims handling standards.
Customer service to our broker partners, insured customers, and other stakeholders is an everyday top priority. We take this very seriously through our communication, relationships and product designs to meet the needs of our customers.
Q: Tell us about a project you are working on.
A: We are currently rolling out revised rates and forms on our Micro (small business) and Nano (sole proprietors) Cyber products. We are increasing coverage, and in certain places reducing rates. Any company less than $100 million in revenues can, working with their broker, receive a quote, binder and policy in less than five minutes.
We are additionally growing our excess cyber product, participating on towers of cyber insurance.
Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: My team, without question. I have the good fortune of being a part of a highly talented and amazing group of cyber, management, and professional liability underwriters and support staff. They are motivated, intelligent, upbeat, team-focused, strong insurance professionals with a passion for the industry, and quite simply all-around great individuals.
I can also say the same with our outside partners that have been a huge part of BCS launching some of the most innovative and successful cyber products in the market.
Working with amazing insurance professionals, laser-focused on putting great products in the market has allowed BCS to become a top 10 cyber liability insurance carrier (per A.M. Best).
Q: Why do you think cyber insurance is becoming such a hot topic?
A: More and more companies are realizing there is a high probability of being a victim of a cyber/privacy related loss. They also realize the outcome could be catastrophic to operating as a going concern.
The goal posts are constantly moving and companies, especially smaller companies with fewer resources, need help staying ahead of cyber threats, navigating the regulatory landscape, ensuring appropriate breach response, and financing the activities related to responding to a cyber incident.
Companies cannot (should not) do it alone and most likely cannot pay for the costs involved without considerable financial stress, if not bankruptcy.
Cyber insurance helps not only pay for the activities related to a breach, including potential litigation, but it also helps align our insureds with the right vendors that will help them mitigate financial and reputational damage.
Q: You spend your days in the cyber world. When you need to get “off the grid”, where do you go/what do you do?
A: The most important and rewarding thing I do is spend time with my amazing wife and two beautiful and relatively crazy daughters (7 and 5). We just have a ton of fun together.
Otherwise I occasionally ruin a good day trying to golf or workout. I’m also a bit geeky and love video games.
Plus, we added a BONUS question for Chad, as the leader of our Culture Team.
Q: You also lead our culture team, which promotes BCS employees “having fun, and getting things done”. Tell us a bit about that.
A: In the long-run, the only truly unique aspect of a company is its culture. A competitive landscape usually means strategies, innovations, and products are ultimately copied. What cannot be copied is a culture.
How shared beliefs and values are defined, what things are considered priorities, what’s determined to be effective and meaningful and how success is measured and rewarded is different at every company and 100% impossible to replicate from company to company.
At BCS, the Culture Team had a lot of great, organic dialogue related to working hard, working smarter, being efficient, etc. Ultimately, we decided simple is better and came up with “having fun, getting things done.” It’s very meaningful and that both parts must go together for a strong culture and successful business. If you have one without the other (or neither), something is off.
The BCS Culture Team is a true testament to the very objective we defined – “having fun, getting things done” and I couldn’t be prouder to work with such an outstanding group of professionals.
