North American businesses paid 2% less last year than in 2014 to cover the total cost of risk (TCOR), according to this year’s Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) Benchmark Survey.

This is attributed to drops in property and liability costs and risk management costs.

The survey defines TCOR as the cost of insurance, plus the cost of losses that are retained and the administrative cost of the risk management department.

RIMS says the 2% drop was tempered by rises in some categories, such as professional liability costs, which increased 25%. Management liability and workers’ compensation costs rose slightly.

For the first time the survey includes cyber insurance. It says the total cost of cyber risk for survey respondents was just US38 cents (50 cents) per $US1000 ($1304) of revenue.

Cyber and transactional insurance are growing niche areas. The cyber sector is expected to double in size to $US5 billion ($6.52 billion) by 2020.

The RIMS survey tracks changes in insurance policy renewal prices, as reported by North American corporate risk managers. It sources data from 52,000 insurance programs in 1457 organisations.