Mitsui Sumitomo, the Japanese insurance major has announced its plans to offer a new product exclusively for the cryptocurrency sector.
According to a report from Luke Walker at Brave New Coin:
The plan’s total theft cover ranges from ten million yen (US$88,500) up to one billion yen (US$8.85 million). It also covers loss from internal and external threats, including employee theft, mistakes, cyberattacks, and other unauthorized access.
Additional to the recovery amount, the policy comes with a range of damage control and prevention services. “In order to prevent damage caused by cyber attacks, targeted mail training and information leakage risk,” the plan’s announcement states, “we provide cyber risk countermeasure services such as security diagnosis and checklist for employees.”
The new insurance product was developed with Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Bitflyer – who helped develop the policy that protects against losses at both the exchange and customer levels, and is the also the first policyholder.
More from Walker at Brave New Coin:
A short-lived wallet service named Elliptic Vault claimed to be the first ever insured bitcoin service, having launched in January 2014 and naming Lloyd’s as their insurer. Unfortunately for them, Lloyds denied that Elliptic Vault was a customer. The service closed down within months and was replaced by a blockchain forensics service.
Later in the year, the Great American Insurance company offered the first official Bitcoin Insurance coverage policy to businesses, although details of the plan are not available on their site, no known bitcoin companies have claimed that they were customers.
In November of the same year, bitcoin vault Xapo announced that they were using AMBest to insure their high-security vaults. Soon afterward Coinbase and BitGo followed suit, making insurance protection a common feature in the largest bitcoin wallet services. Still, each known case of insurance coverage has been a custom package.
