Underwriting agency Agile will refund up to 50% of the policy excess on its new cyber product for clients that improve their risk awareness and resilience strategies.

The insurer is collaborating with Macquarie University to encourage businesses to reduce risk and accelerate their recovery from cyber attacks.

Clients must follow guidelines from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on preparing for data breaches.

Policyholders that show this to Agile as part of the underwriting process will receive a refund if a claim is paid. Clients’ information will be used to “triage” incidents and accelerate responses.

Macquarie cyber-security researcher Denny Wan is studying sustainable approaches to cyber readiness, and expects to see a reduction in claims exposure from the accelerated incident response process.

The new CyberSelect product has up to 16 policy benefits available, and is backed by incident response managers Clyde & Co.

Policyholders can immediately access Agile’s expert panel to assess data breaches without first obtaining written consent, and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires claimants to assess if a breach is likely to result in serious harm.