Underwriting & Loss Control Resources

Any time an item is bought and paid for online, the transaction falls under a broad-based business heading known as “e-commerce.” The online businesses that market and sell their products over the internet can be referred to as e-tailers or e-commerce merchants. Many of the goods sold by e-tailers are similar to those sold by brick-and-mortar retailers, although some websites specialize in rare or difficult-to-find merchandise.

Our reports on e-tailers explain why cyber insurance carries a high degree of exposure.

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Read our Best’s Review article to learn more about the risks that e-tailers face. You’ll also find excerpts from our reports, including information on lines of coverage and questions for on-site inspections.

The Best's Underwriting Report offers a detailed summary of each line of insurance, answering questions such as:

• What is a DoS attack, and why does it present both a first- and third-party exposure?
• Why might e-tailers that have products drop-shipped directly from manufacturers experience a reduced exposure when it comes to faulty, dangerous or defective merchandise?

The Best’s Loss Control Report gives you the big picture for exposures and controls, with questions to consider such as:

• For US firms, are internet-based credit card point-of-sale systems compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) requirements?
• Are sales records and files containing customer information backed up daily onto databases on a different computer network than the insured’s regular one?

E-tailers, based on the Global Industry Classification Standard* for Specialized Consumer Services, have an MSCI ESG Risk Intensity Score** of 1 as of September 24, 2024.

*The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) is the global industry classification standard jointly developed by MSCI and S&P Global Market Intelligence and a widely accepted approach to defining industries and classifying securities by industry.

*The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) is the standard jointly developed by MSCI and S&P Global Market Intelligence and is a widely accepted approach to defining industries and classifying securities by industry.

**The ESG Risk Intensity Score is a quantitative assessment of industry ESG risk, where a score of 10 corresponds to the highest level of risk relative to all other industries. Each GICS sub-industry’s ESG Risk Intensity Score is based on the average risk score across the environmental, social and governance pillars, which is then converted into a decile-based score, where a score of 10 is assigned to the top 10% highest-risk sub-industries. For more information on MSCI ESG products and services, please contact ClientService@msci.com.

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